


Boy Falling Out of the Sky

by SylvanWitch



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-21
Updated: 2012-04-21
Packaged: 2017-11-04 02:01:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 37,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/388431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's hard enough getting along in high school when he's always the new kid.  It's harder when he befriends the most bullied kid on campus, finds himself caught up in a case he can't share with his big brother, and discovers that he has a crush on the big man on campus.  Add to that a discovery about his brother that he never expected, and it's safe to say that Sam's having the worst semester ever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Boy Falling Out of the Sky

**Author's Note:**

> This was my SPN J2 Big Bang for 2009. I'm slowly migrating all of my adult fic here to AO3 and wanted to make sure it made it.

Sam is good at high school.

 

Which is not to say that he likes it or that it likes him, only that he’s gone to so many in the last three years that he knows their ins and outs, knows exactly what to expect no matter what kind of school it is.

 

Because people—especially teenagers—are predictable everywhere.

 

And predictably vicious.

 

He doesn’t care that his brown flannel shirt fits right in with the dominant motif of the big rural Minnesota public high school or that his boots, scuffed and well-used, look like everybody else’s.

 

Doesn’t care that his broad shoulders attract the attention of not a few girls.

 

Doesn’t care that that attraction raises serious resentment in the guys.

 

He might not even care that a group of said guys have cornered a couple of pale, dark-haired, hollow-eyed kids under the stairs and are about to give them physical grief, counting on the relative discretion of location and the recent ringing of the homeroom bell to keep them from getting caught.

 

He might not care—except that Sam has always been a soft sell for the beat-up and the bullied, can’t walk by an injustice without attempting to right it, even if it means getting into trouble on his very first day at Green Bank Regional High School.

 

Sighing inwardly and putting on his best hunting face, Sam approaches the gang of five beefy guys making a threatening semi-circle around the pair of skinny kids.

 

He sees as he gets closer that one of the two has a bad acne problem and the other must be on drugs—his eyes are glassy, wearing a strangely intense and yet faraway look that makes Sam shiver a little, in spite of his incipient heroism.

 

As he gets close, he hears the biggest of the bullies say, “Whatsa matter, Eddy?  Your ‘friend’ havin’ his period today, not feelin’ too good?”

 

“Yeah, Eddy,” adds a second boy, neck fat and red from the back, a heart attack ten years out.  “Your ‘girlfriend’ on the rag?”

 

Which of the kids is Eddy, Sam can’t make out, since neither of the two boys looks up or makes eye contact with any of the attackers.

 

Sam considers that this isn’t really his fight, that these two might be able to defend themselves, that the five guys haven’t yet raised so much as a finger.

 

Still, Sam knows high school.

 

When Fatneck raises a hand, Sam’s there to grab his arm at the elbow and yank backward, tugging the mountain of meat off balance.

 

“What the fuck?” Says Fatneck eloquently, turning to face him and wresting his arm out of Sam’s grip.

 

The other four round slowly on Sam and give him varying degrees of the same pack-like stare he’s seen on ghouls and girls at the mall alike.

 

“Who the fuck are you?” The biggest boy says, the one Sam has already pegged as the alpha male of this ersatz gang.

 

“Sam Winchester,” he answers, knowing there’s no point in hiding or lying.  “I’m new,” he adds.

 

There’s a snort of mingled disbelief and mockery.  “You’d haveta be new to piss us off.  Otherwise, you’d know we’re not the ones you wanna fuck with, Winchester,” the leader of the pack responds. 

 

“Yeah, we’ll beat the shit outta you and leave you for your mommy to shovel up,” a third boy adds.

 

Sam’s long ago gotten over the reflex to beat unconscious anyone who brings up his mother.  He’d have been in jail for life by now if he hadn’t gotten past that particular adolescent gauntlet.

 

Still, he doesn’t like the kid’s tone.

 

“That’s unlikely,” he asserts pleasantly, as though he’s just offered them advice on passing calculus. 

 

The two would-be victims, still blocked behind the wall of their assailants, watch wide-eyed, one of them—the kid with acne—shaking his head a little and muttering under his breath.

 

A collective glance passes between the five guys then, a look Sam had been expecting and that telegraphs for him exactly what they plan next.

 

Since he’s learned through hard experience to never let the monster have its ground, he curtails the gang’s plans by drawing back his fist and punching the biggest kid squarely between the eyes.

 

It’s not a subtle blow—and not particularly elegant—plus, it makes his knuckles hurt like a son of a bitch.  But it has the effect of dropping the guy like a sack of moldy potatoes, and before the air has entirely left the kid’s body on impact with the ground, his four followers are testing the weight on the backs of their heels and darting uncertain looks at each other.

 

“Who’s next?” Sam asks, nodding to himself as though they’ve already answered and gesturing to the two skinny kids that they should probably take this opportunity to get gone.

 

They ghost by him without so much as a thank you, which might have irritated Sam even a year ago.  Since then, he’s grown up some and learned a lot about human failings.  It’s not only monsters that make life suck.

 

“You’re dead!” Fatneck says, safe in the enclave of his buddies, who are taking turns staring open-mouthed at their leader, who’s groaning and shaking his head uncertainly, like he’s not quite sure what just happened.

 

Sam doesn’t even grace the guy with a verbal response.  Instead, he gives him the look he ordinarily reserves for the moment before he kills some evil thing, a look he’s learned from his father and brother and that is usually effective in silencing any human protest.

 

It has the expected effect this time, as well.

 

He walks away, pretty sure that he’s just made his life at Green Bank High more hellish than it was already going to be and equally sure that he doesn’t much care.

 

Still, it’s going to be a long few weeks until Dad gets back.

 

At lunch that day, Sam sits alone, which is nothing he’s not accustomed to.  He hears the speculative notes in the voices around him, something he’s also familiar with.  What he doesn’t know yet is how public opinion is coming down on him, but he’s not worried.

 

When the time is right, he’ll be made aware.  High school students are tribal, and they all follow the same primitive rituals, in his considerable experience.

 

Someone will take it upon himself—or, more rarely, herself—to make it clear just where Sam stands on the chain of command.

 

If it’s near the bottom, it’s only a matter of determining what flavor of freak he is.

 

As he’s leaving the lunch room to try to find the textbook loan office—someone’s defaced his current math text with penises, an artistic gift left by an earlier unfortunate like himself, and he needs a different copy—he catches movement out of his peripheral.  His free hand heads for his pocket, where he keeps his knife, even as his head swivels to take in the threat.

 

It’s Eddy, murmuring quietly to his creepy companion.  As soon as he notices that Sam see him, Eddy turns to walk away, but Sam’s faster and catches up with him.

 

In a strange parody of the earlier rescue, he traps the boys beneath a set of stairs.

 

“I’m Sam,” he states for the record, offering his hand.

 

Eddy looks at him like he’s got something up his sleeve, and Sam withdraws the gesture.

 

“You’re Eddy, right?”

 

He gets a bobbing nod from Eddy but not a sound.

 

“Who’s your friend?”

 

This brings Eddy’s eyes up, and for a second, Sam sees there the briefest flash of rebellion or anger, quickly quashed by apparent self-preservation.

 

Sam turns to the paler version of Eddy, the kid with the crazy eyes who seems stoned out of his mind.

  
“I’m Sam,” he says, and he holds out his hand again.

 

Behind him, Sam hears a burst of snickering, and he turns his head enough to see a gaggle of girls walking by, staring straight at him.

 

Suddenly, he feels ridiculous with his hand hanging out there, unshaken, in the air.

 

He puts his hand in his pocket, finding comfort in the coolness of the metal and the familiar weight of the closed knife against his palm.

 

“Anyway, I just thought I’d introduce myself.”  He lets it hang there for a long second, expecting something, but Eddy only stares at his sneakers.

  
The other kid has his eyes fixed on Sam, but he doesn’t say a thing, and Sam can’t read his expression.

 

Finally, Sam shrugs, hearing Dean’s voice say, “Oooo-kay,” in his head as he turns to go.

 

“Th-thank you,” he thinks he hears.

 

He stops and turns again to half-face the boys beneath the stairs.

 

“No problem,” he says.  “Take it easy.”

 

“You, too,” Eddy replies.

 

By the end of the day, Sam’s got a pretty good idea of the verdict that Green Bank High has come to concerning him.

 

“Fag,” he hears as he comes to his locker.  There’s a tall kid, almost his own height, leaning against the wall two lockers down, giving Sam a look of challenge from behind mirrored aviator glasses.

 

Sam ignores the word and the kid, avoids making a comment about _someone_ having seen too many eighties movies, and chooses instead to dump the books he doesn’t need and slam his locker shut.

 

But as he starts down the hall, heading for the school’s front doors, the tall kid steps in his way.

 

“We don’t like fags here.”

 

And now there’s the inevitable group gathering, lemmings to the cliff’s edge, waiting for the plummet.

 

Sam only knows that he won’t be the one going down, and he lets it show on his face, sizing the other up to decide the best approach to the problem.

 

Something of his experience and calculation must show on his face, because he sees the second the other boy decides Sam might be too much of a challenge to take on in public.  Sam knows the boy’s already planning for a way he can get to Sam without any witnesses.

 

Sam smiles wide, teeth gleaming, but it’s not a friendly smile, not a look anyone likes to be on the other end of. 

 

Then he very deliberately snakes his tongue out and licks his lips, letting the smile slide into something suggestive.

 

“You sure you don’t like them?” Sam asks.

 

It’s a cheap play, and one he’d ordinarily avoid, except that he’s got a feeling about this kid, about the kind of kid who has to go out of his way to hate on gays. 

 

Plus, if he draws the kid out now, it avoids an ambush later on.

 

“You know what they say about guys who protest too much, right?”  He adds for good measure, putting a little swagger into his step as he enters the kid’s personal space.

 

The kid takes a step back, uncertainty entering his voice as he blusters, “Get away from me, you freak.”

 

Another kid, one of the back-up singers such guys usually come with, chimes in.  “Yeah, don’t you already have a boyfriend?”

 

This raises a general laugh, by the tone of which Sam is able to gauge his exact status in the school community.

  
He nods, mostly to himself, and then shrugs like he’s bored already, using the same shoulder to brush past the tall kid.

 

The others part like tall grass in a cutting wind—and they murmur just like that, too, as Sam walks the long hall to the doors.

 

He hears a word here or there, the expected, ubiquitous ones, but makes it to the doors without any other physical incident.

 

The Impala is a grateful shadow hulking at the curb when he reaches the exterior stairs, his brother’s music an almost welcoming paean. 

 

“Hey,” he says, sliding into his seat.

 

“Hey,” his brother answers, pulling out deftly into the afternoon traffic.  “How was your first day?”

 

“Good,” Sam lies, and it’s easy on his lips.  He learned a long time ago never to tell Dean how things really are.  If his brother had been over-protective when they’d shared a high school, he’d only gotten exponentially worse when he couldn’t be there anymore to keep an ear to the ground and an eye on his little brother.

 

“How was your day?” He asks to deflect any more of Dean’s questions.

 

“Same old, same old,” Dean answers. 

 

“Any word from Dad?”

 

“Nah, but I don’t expect to hear from him unless he needs something,” Dean observes.  “He’s up in the middle of nowhere hunting werewolves.”

 

There is in Dean’s voice a hint of envy, the barest suggestion that his brother wishes he were with their father and not carting Sam back from his first day at the new school.

 

Sam carefully doesn’t say that Dean could be with Dad if he didn’t have three busted ribs.

 

It shows in the careful way Dean takes the turn onto the street where their tiny, two-bedroom rental sits,  in the middle of a postage-stamp lawn and shoved up close between two other nearly identical dwellings.

 

The neighborhood had been built for returning GIs once upon a time, the places cheaply and hastily erected to house the families expected to come out of that war.

 

Since then, they’d taken on the seedy but timeless quality of so many other places Sam’s lived that sometimes he forgets there are more lavish homes to be had just a few streets up and over.

 

Of course, “lavish” is relative in a town this size.

 

Green Bank, Minnesota, population 3158.

 

Two pizza parlors, five churches, a funeral home, nine bars, and a smattering of mom-and-pop shops doing their best to hang on in the flagging economy of a dying mill town.

 

As blink-and-you-miss-it goes, Sam’s seen better and worse.  He can’t get too excited one way or the other.

 

“Fuck, but it’s cold,” Dean remarks, maneuvering himself with deceptive ease out of the driver’s seat.  Sam’s had his share of bruised ribs, even cracked one once, and he knows how it hurts, knows what Dean’s hiding.

 

Knows that his brother has gotten comfortable with Dad’s whiskey while their father’s gone, working away at the bottle at night to help him sleep, propped up and drowsy-eyed, on the couch.

 

Says Sam keeps him awake with his muttering and jerking off, but Sam suspects it’s the other way around—not the jerking off part; that’s a given in either case—but the muttering.  Dean doesn’t sleep well lately, maybe the injury, maybe the way he incurred it keeping him awake through the night.

 

Sometimes, Sam awakens in the breathing darkness to hear Dean stumbling around in the kitchen, opening and closing the fridge door and browsing the cupboards, as though by some magical combination he can conjure beer and snacks that weren’t there before.

 

“You comin’ in, or are you gonna stand out here ‘til your balls freeze off?”

 

Sam jerks himself out of recollection and shuts the car door, shoulders his book bag, heads in behind Dean.

 

The house is cold, kept that way to conserve money, since Dad left a limited supply and Dean’s not yet quite up to the fight that might come after a good pool hustle, assuming he can find a willing mark.

 

“Got homework?”

 

Sam rolls his eyes, bites back a customary rejoinder about Dean not being Dad, and grunts an affirmative, heading for the room they’re supposed to share, if Dean weren’t not-sleeping on the couch.

 

“Get it done.  I’ll make dinner.”

 

That stops Sam in the narrow hallway that leads to the bedrooms and bathroom at the back of the house.

  
“It’s my turn.”  He looks over his shoulder to take in Dean’s face.

 

Dean shrugs like it’s ordinary for him to pick up Sam’s chores.  In fact, it’s probably a sign of the apocalypse, but Sam decides against saying a word when he sees in Dean’s face something like desperation, just a fleeting shadow, there and then gone.

 

“Okay.  Uh, thanks.”

 

Dean waves off Sam’s thanks, and Sam continues on, dumping his bag on the bed but not bothering to shrug out of his coat, figuring it’s warmer to layer up.

 

 _Why the hell did Dad pick a job in Minnesota in January?_ Sam thinks.  _Like there aren’t werewolves in Oklahoma?_

 

He finds his calc book and some loose-leaf, heads for the only table in the house, taking up inconvenient space in the tiny kitchen off the living room.

 

Dean’s in there working on dinner—looks like mac and cheese and Steak’ums—but he leaves Sam be, letting his brother concentrate on his homework.

 

Math is something Sam’s always been good at, the neat numbers making an intrinsic sense, providing a stark contrast to the nature of his night life, which is dominated by abominations that defy nature’s strictest equations.

 

It doesn’t take him long until he’s done and up setting the table, moving around his brother like they’ve choreographed every move with a familiarity born of long and ample experience.

 

“You sure nothing happened today at school, Sammy?”

 

Ordinarily, Sam would correct Dean’s use of the diminutive, but his brother looks tired in the dim illumination of the range light, and he doesn’t want to piss him off.

 

“School was school, Dean.”  And he tries to sound patient and not at all annoyed with Dean’s prying.

 

“Okay,” Dean answers, putting his hands up at the edge of the table like he’s surrendering or pushing himself back.

 

He does that next, carefully, and Sam sees the way his brother’s lips tighten at the corners and the way his eyes look shadow-bruised when he blinks away a wince.

 

“Let me get the dishes.”

 

“That wasn’t even a question,” Dean answers, leaving the kitchen.  Seconds later, Sam is serenaded by the jingle for a used car dealership two towns over.

 

He washes up to the sounds of a _Three’s Company_ rerun, Dean laughing along with the in-studio audience at all the usual juvenile jokes.

 

If his brother’s laughter is a little restrained, Sam ignores it. 

That night, he dreams of free-fall.  As always, when he strikes the ground, he comes awake, heart pounding, eyes open and blinking away fear-tears, staring up at the mottled ceiling glowing indefinitely with the streetlight out the side window filtered in through the cheap sheet they’d hung for a curtain.

 

It takes him a long time to get to sleep again, but when he does, it’s blessedly dream-free.

 

The morning routine doesn’t vary, even if it is only his second day at a new school, and Dean drops him off with the usual warnings, all of which Sam predictably answers with a verbal shrug.

 

But when he reaches the hallway that leads to his homeroom, Sam has a disconcerting moment of déjà vu, wondering if he’s been caught in some sort of weird time-loop.  Because looming under the stairs are five beefy guys.

 

The difference is that they don’t have Eddy and his friend cornered.

  
They’re waiting for Sam.

 

Alpha Male, who Sam has learned is named Bobby, indicates with an impolite gesture that Sam is to join them.

 

He smirks and shakes his head, keeps walking, waits for the hands to grab his jacket collar or shove him between the shoulder blades.

 

But that doesn’t happen.  He glances behind him with surprise to find Bobby and Fatneck and the other three stooges eyeballing something ahead of Sam.

 

He turns to find Mr. Traymore, the Assistant Principal in charge of student affairs, standing at Sam’s homeroom door.

 

When he nears, the man says, “Sam Winchester?”

 

Sam nods, feeling a frisson of unease zap through his belly.

 

“Come with me, please.”

 

Traymore’s office has the same cheap, sturdy beige carpet as the outer office; the desk has the requisite picture of a smiling family—in this case, a brown-haired wife and two little boys in various stages of dental care.  There’s a school pennant on one wall—Green Bank Bears, Sam notes—and an array of impressive diplomas on another.  The window looks out over a courtyard housing an air conditioning unit, an electrical transformer box, and the cafeteria ventilation ducts.

 

The room has the pervasive odor of frying things.

 

“Do you know why I asked to speak with you, Sam?”

 

Sam swallows his immediate, smart-ass response, figuring _because I have impressive standardized test scores and am tall enough for volleyball_ isn’t the expected answer.

 

“Is this about yesterday?” Sam tries to sound aggrieved, like the last thing he wanted was trouble on his second day at a new school.  Which is true, as far as it goes.

“Yes, Sam.  I understand you had an altercation with Bobby Munsy and his friends.”

 

“Altercation, sir?” 

 

The Winchester guide to deflecting authority involves playing dumb when it’ll work.

 

“I think you know exactly what I’m talking about, Mr. Winchester.”

 

Since the A.P. has switched to his last name, Sam knows Traymore is smarter than Sam had hoped.  Time to switch tacks.

 

“Those guys were picking on Eddy and his friend,” Sam explains, skipping the attempt at innocence and going right for the misunderstood good Samaritan.

 

“Eddy and his friend have that problem a lot, Sam.  But then, you probably didn’t know that, since you hadn’t been here more than five minutes when this…situation…occurred.  I’ll tell you what, Sam.  Since you’re new, and I think you probably didn’t mean any harm, I’m going to let you go with a warning this time.  Stay away from Bobby Munsy and his friends.  And while you’re at it, you’d probably do best to avoid Eddy, too.  He has…problems.  Just try to get along, okay, Sam?  Join a club, maybe take up a sport.  You look like you’ve got the height for basketball or volleyball.  Find your niche.  Make friends.  And then you won’t have to visit me in my office again, okay?”

 

Sam nods, taking the advice he’s heard at least a dozen times with the same reaction he always has.  He won’t be there long enough to make friends, join a club, or find a team that needs his height. 

 

On his way out, Traymore gives him a guy-like slap on the shoulder and then calls a girl—dyed black hair, eyebrow piercing, permanent sneer—into his office.

 

Sam picks up his pass to first period from the secretary and tries not to think too hard about the way he’s handled things so far. 

 

The day passes in the usual way.  Lunch alone, surrounded by suggestive expressions and the occasional gesture, last long walk to the front doors punctuated by remarks from a couple of kids.  Sam notes with mild interest that the tall kid who accosted him the day before is nowhere to be seen.  But Green Bank is a big high school, and Sam spends most of his time assessing the immediate threats, so if the kid didn’t put himself in Sam’s way, he wouldn’t have necessarily seen him.

 

One thing changes, though.  The Impala is idling at the curb, Sam already almost down the steps, when he hears a hesitant voice say, “Hey, Sam.”

 

It’s a greeting of sorts, not an invitation to converse, but Sam searches around to see Eddy and his friend standing at the bottom of the stairs and to one side, half-hidden by the shrubs that grow up along the railing.

 

“Hey, Eddy,” Sam responds, giving the kid a smile and a nod.  He pauses on the last step, waits to see if Eddy wants something.

 

But Eddy says nothing, and his friend just fixes Sam with that weird look, so Sam gives a kind of a wave, more a flip of the hand than anything else, and resumes his usual pace.

 

Wednesday, Sam has gym class and discovers that he shares it with Eddy and his friend.  As his luck would have it, Bobby Munsy and Fatneck are also in their class.

 

Sighing inwardly, Sam changes into his gym clothes, all senses on alert for possible attacks.

 

Munsy has a fading bruise between his eyes and a murderous expression, which he levels at Sam as they make their way out to the gym floor.

 

Coach Poronofsky tells them that they’re going to continue their lessons on soccer, and Sam feels a little thrill of relief and pleasure at the news.

 

Still, he keeps an eye on Munsy as the teams are picked—Sam last, even after Eddy and his friend and by Munsy’s opposition.

 

The game is played with varying degrees of aptitude.  Sam’s put on fullback, which suits him, and he makes a couple of pretty spectacular saves that earn him admiring glances from a couple of the guys.

 

His attention is distracted, though, by Eddy, whose uncoordinated efforts at offense are seemingly hampered by the way his friend sticks to him.  The guy’s not playing his position, but Coach P. either hasn’t noticed or is used to this particular vagary because he says nothing.

 

When Munsy, who is on Eddy’s team, viciously trips the skinny kid and Eddy goes down in a spill that’s painful to witness, Coach P. only blows his whistle and calls a foul on Munsy.  While the team is sorting out the return to play, Sam waits for someone to help Eddy up or the Coach to make sure he’s okay.

 

No one does, not even Eddy’s friend, who stands there, hands limp at his sides, staring at Eddy, who is slowly pushing himself to his knees.

 

Sam can see from across the court that Eddy’s palms are brush-burned, and he finally makes a noise of disgust and jogs over to the fallen kid himself.

 

He offers a hand, and Eddy looks up at him with an expression identical to his friend’s—astonishment mixed with terrified suspicion.

 

“You okay?” Sam asks, hoping Eddy doesn’t leave his hand hanging out there again.

 

Eddy offers a shaking, pale appendage to Sam, and Sam hauls him upright.

 

There are twin bloody spots on the bony points of each knee, and Sam winces in sympathy.  “You should get those cleaned out,” he notes, even as Coach blows the whistle to continue the game.

 

Eddy shrugs.  “I’m okay.”

 

Sam shrugs, too, and jogs back to his place.  In the ten minutes remaining in the game, he makes another excellent save, but this time, the guys who’d offered him congratulations before say nothing, don’t even look at him, and Sam sighs again to himself, knowing he’s blown what little cool he’d managed to capture.

 

In the locker room, the guy to either side of him makes a point to talk over him, like he’s not standing there.  When they fall suddenly silent, Sam knows what he’ll find before he turns around.

 

Munsy and Fatneck—who he’s learned from the game is called Jerry—are standing at the end of the row of lockers, blocking Sam’s way toward the hallway out of the room.

 

He could go the long way around, back toward the showers and down another aisle, but he’s content to let things play out.

 

“Where’s your boyfriend, fag?” Munsy begins.

 

Sam considers the extraordinary cleverness of the big boy and says nothing, instead taking his bookbag out of the locker and shouldering it.

 

“I’m talking to you,” Munsy continues.  The boy between Sam and Munsy clears out, and Munsy advances.

 

Sam tops him by a good four inches, and he’s already established that he can beat Munsy in a fight.  Sam lets his eyes linger deliberately on the evidence of his physical superiority.

 

Maybe he smirks a little, too, Traymore’s warning all but forgotten.

 

Munsy telegraphs the punch and Sam dodges it easily, straightening up with the same smirk on his face, clearly unperturbed by the attempt.

 

On the other hand, Munsy is breathing a little hard and turning bright red.

 

He waits, watching Munsy without appearing to be very concerned, and sees in the other boy’s distracted glance that someone is coming up behind him.

 

The muffled squeak of sneaker sole on tile floor gives him plenty of warning, and he sidesteps to the other set of lockers just as Jerry charges.

 

There’s a comical moment as Munsy throws his hands up to deflect Jerry’s forward momentum, and Sam snickers.

 

So do a couple of spectators who’ve stuck around for the post-game show.

 

“Look,” Sam says, his voice reasonable, smile pleasant, like Ted Bundy in a supermarket parking lot.  “I don’t want any trouble with you, and you don’t want any with me, either.”  The last he adds with a certainty that experience has already proven, and he sees in Munsy’s face some recognition of the implicit threat.  “Why don’t we just agree to keep out of each other’s way?”

 

Sam knows before Munsy says a word that his own have been futile.  Guys like Munsy live on reputations they’ve built on the pain of others.  Big Bobby Munsy can’t tolerate a rival—or even an indifferent other—without losing all the ground he’s gained over the years of bullying and harassment.

 

So when the two boys charge him together, Sam’s expecting that, too, and he drops his left shoulder and barrels into Jerry, while at the same time straight-arming Munsy with his right hand.

 

Jerry pinwheels backward, trips over a gym bag, and goes down hard on his ass.  Munsy spins a half-circle and hits the lockers next to Sam with a resounding report that reverberates off the metal.

 

“What the hell’s going on in here?” Coach P calls out in warning, taking his time before rounding the lockers to investigate.  It’s obvious he doesn’t really want the hassle of breaking up a fight.

 

Sam straightens, glances at Jerry, who’s working on climbing to his feet, face a dangerous beet red, and then gives Munsy a look, too.

 

“Nothing, Coach,” Sam says, passing Munsy on the way to the corridor that leads out to the main hall.

 

The bell rings to end the period as Sam makes it to the hall.

 

“You’re dead, Winchester!” he hears.  So does everyone pouring out of the metal shop across the way.  A couple of them look up, see that it’s him, and nudge each other meaningfully.

 

Sam keeps his eye roll to himself and starts toward the chem. lab.

 

“Hey,” he hears from behind him, and turns to find Eddy standing just outside the locker room door.

 

Sam returns to Eddy, notices his shadow seems to have disappeared, and says, “Where’s your friend?”

 

Eddy’s face changes, closes down, and he mumbles something that might be “Forget it,” as he turns to go.

 

Sam puts a hand on his elbow.  “Wait!”

 

On his periphery, people pass and nudge and snicker.  He drops Eddy’s arm.

 

“Is your friend okay?”  Sam wonders if maybe Munsy went looking for a less challenging target after Coach broke up their little scuffle.

 

Maybe it’s the genuine concern in his voice, or perhaps it’s the equal weight of impatience—Sam’s tired of Eddy’s weird social disorders.  He just wants information—but Eddy swallows, eyes suddenly wide, face growing even more pale, a real feat, considering that the kid looks like he lives in a cave as it is.

 

In a very quiet voice that Sam has to strain to hear over the sounds of class change, Eddy says, “You can see him?”

 

This question startles a bark of laughter from him.  “Well, yeah.  I mean, not right now.  Where is he?  Does he have a different class than you?” 

 

Eddy’s Adam’s apple bobs painfully as he swallows, apparently completely undone by this information.

 

“Meet me at 3:00 by the music room,” Eddy whispers, turning and hurrying away before Sam can even answer.

 

“Ooo-kay,” Sam says to himself in decent imitation of his brother.  “Whatever.”

 

Sam should have known.  He should have guessed from the way that people always put air quotes around the word “friend” when talking about the kid who hangs out with Eddy.

 

He should’ve guessed from the strange look in Eddy’s friend’s eyes and the fact that he’d never heard the guy speak.

 

Or the way people laughed at him for trying to shake Eddy’s friend’s hand that first day at school.

 

When Sam actually realizes that Eddy’s friend is not real, though, is when Eddy introduces him to said friend outside the band room that afternoon.

 

“Sam, this is Eli.  Eli, this is Sam Winchester.”

 

Sam holds his hand out a bit uncertainly, sparing a glance around them to see that they’re alone and not being watched.

 

But Eli doesn’t put his hand out.  He looks at Sam, a piercing look that bores a hole right through him and leaves cold wind in its wake, and Sam shivers a little and takes his hand back.

 

“Nice to meet you, Eli,” Sam manages, even as he’s running through a catalogue of creatures in his head and trying to figure out what this one might be.  A lot of things can be invisible or move so fast that they seem that way—wendigos, for one, but no way Eli is a cannibalistic giant; ditto skinwalkers, same argument applies. 

 

But of all the things that can make themselves invisible, Sam can’t think of one that would befriend a human kid and not eat him at the earliest opportunity.

 

The second shiver comes when Sam realizes he might be up against an entirely new monster.  Not knowing scares Sam more than any monster in his dad’s book.

 

“I knew I wasn’t crazy,” Eddy is saying, and Sam draws his attention back to the boy.  “I knew Eli was real.  It’s just some giant joke that they all thought was funny, pretending not to see him when he came to school five years ago, moved here from up in Pineview.  ‘Crazy Eddy’ and his imaginary friend.”

 

It’s like Eddy hasn’t had a chance to say more than three words to another person except Eli in all of those five years, for now that Sam’s gotten him talking, he won’t shut up.

  
He explains how Eli appeared one October afternoon in the seventh grade, showed up on the playground during recess and started playing with Eddy, who even then, Eddy confides, was an outcast, picked on and pushed around by the other kids.

 

“Eli talks,” Eddy says. “It’s not just in my head.”  This he says like maybe Sam doubts him, or maybe like he doubts himself, and both Sam and Eddy look at Eli just then.

 

“Hey,” Eli says.  His voice is rough, like he doesn’t use it much, and a little low, like he’s older than he looks.  But his lips definitely move and sound most certainly comes out, and Sam thinks that’s a relief, anyway, since it reduces the list of creatures Eli could be if the boy can talk like ordinary people.

 

“Hey,” Sam returns, trying not to swallow too obviously around his heart, which is stuck in his throat. 

 

 _Just because Eli isn’t human doesn’t mean he’s a danger_ , Sam tells himself.

 

Then himself says, _Name one time that was true._

Sam swallows again.

 

“So, does, uh…do your parents know about Eli?”

 

Eddy’s face loses a little animation, and Sam feels badly for asking all of a sudden, like maybe it’s none of his business, or like Eddy’s got some terrible secret.

  
 _Besides the invisible kid only you and he can see?_   Sam really hates his inner voice sometimes.

 

“My dad’s dead.”  
  
“Oh, hey, I’m sorry,” Sam says, and he means it.  He’s imagined having to say that phrase a lot of times.  And he’s had plenty of practice with his mom, so he can understand the way Eddy admits it like it’s some kind of mark against him.

 

Eddy shrugs.  “It was five years ago.”

 

And that catches Sam’s notice.  He’d bet good money—assuming he had any—that Eli showed up not long after Eddy’s dad died.

 

“My mom doesn’t see Eli.  But, you know, it’s not ‘cause she’s mean to me or anything.  She’s just…sick is all.”

 

And the pause there before the admission tells Sam more than he wanted to know about the nature of Eddy’s mom’s illness.

  
He’s heard that hitching note, the elision people use to hide their shame.

 

Sam spares a look at Eli, just a quick one, because until he knows what Eli is, he doesn’t want to engage him in prolonged contact of any kind.  He sees in the creature’s eyes a sorrow he’s seen before—on his father’s face, on cold October nights when Dad thinks Sam and Dean are asleep and he’s sitting up at the motel table, paging through the earliest entries in his journal.

 

He feels unaccountably better about Eli when he sees that look.  Whatever the boy is, he cares about Eddy.

 

Which makes Sam think of something else.

  
“Hey, Eddy, has Eli ever…helped you out?  You know, when you’re having…trouble…from the other kids?”

 

Eddy’s head shake is emphatic.  “I don’t want his help.  I don’t want him getting hurt.  He’s kinda fragile.”

 

Sam gives the strange creature another quick look and considers Eddy’s words.

 

“Has anything…weird…ever happened to the kids that pick on you?”

 

“Weird like how?”

 

Sam boggles for a second.  He has to explain weird to a kid who’s got an invisible, obviously supernatural friend?  
  


“Like, has anyone ever gotten hurt after pushing you around?  Or maybe had an accident?”

 

Eddy seems to think that over and then sort of gives a half-shake of his head.

  
“No, I don’t think so.  Oh, wait!”

 

Sam feels a thrill run through him, low, like a mild ungrounded current.

 

“Andrea Ross got stuck in a desk once right after she got done putting peanut butter on my seat.  Is that what you mean?”

 

The thrill dissipates with an expelled breath, and Sam shakes his head.  “No, not really.  Never mind.”

 

Distantly, Sam hears a car horn and realizes what time it is.

 

“Shit!”

 

Eddy starts and takes an involuntary step back.

 

“Sorry,” Sam says, ruefully.  “But my brother’s waiting.  I’ve gotta go.  I’ll see you tomorrow?”

 

“Ye-ah,” Eddy answers, hesitantly. “Uh—“

 

Sam, who’s already started to walk away, turns around, walking backwards.  “What?”

 

“You sure you want to hang out with me.  I mean…the other kids won’t like you very much and—“

 

Sam’s laugh cuts the skinny boy off.  “The other kids already think I’m a freak.  I don’t mind.”

 

Eddy’s smile is weak but genuine when he says, “And at least you won’t be alone anymore.”

 

Sam gives a wave at that, already turning, breaking into a jog to get to the Impala before an impatient Dean parks and comes inside.  That’s the last thing Sam needs.

 

He considers Eddy’s last words as he bursts through the door and takes the stairs two at a time. 

 

Sam isn’t alone, not really.  He might not make any friends at Green Bank, but he’s always got Dean, and sometimes he’s got Dad, too.  Eddy’s got no one but an unknown creature to keep him company.

 

“What the hell, Sam?  I’ve been waiting for fifteen minutes.”

 

Sam ducks his head a little in apology, says, “Mrs. McGavin asked me to stay after to pick up the extra credit.”

 

It sounds like something Sam would do, and he’s so grateful Dean accepts his words that he doesn’t even mind the ribbing Dean gives him about being a big geek.

 

“You know, you keep overachieving like this, you’re going to make the rest of us look bad.  We Winchesters have a reputation to maintain.”

 

Sam eyes Dean, who’s driving with his left hand on the wheel, keeping his right arm close to his body.  He figures Dean’s probably pushed himself too hard today doing something he shouldn’t be doing with broken ribs. 

 

“And what reputation is that?  For being stubborn, hard-headed miscreants who live on the fringes of society and avoid authority at all costs?”

 

“Dude, you just described the entire state of Montana.”

 

“Yeah, and a good part of Wyoming, too,” Sam answers, laughing.  It’s funny because it’s true.

 

But Dean sobers quickly, and just before they reach their street, he says, “Seriously, Sam, I get that you like school and all, but it’s not like you’re going to have to use much of what you learn there.  I mean, you’re better off studying Latin and mythology and shit, you know?  What good’s math or English going to do you when you’re up against a pissed off poltergeist?”

 

In his head, Sam’s thinking of the way geometry plays into a good game of pool, and the way Milton had the skinny on Satan long before a lot of the authors of Uncle Bobby’s books ever got around to even thinking about fallen angels.

 

But he doesn’t say any of that.

 

Instead, he just says, lightly, like it doesn’t mean anything.  “Maybe I want to do something else.”

 

Sam’s never actually voiced that particular desire before, not to his family, anyway, and he’s sort of surprised at himself for saying it now.

 

Beside him, Dean laughs, a disbelieving little sound, just a chuff of breath, and then says, voice laced with derision, “What, you going to go to college, live in a dorm, date co-eds?”

 

Sam shrugs defensively, says, “Maybe,” with the kind of sullen challenge he usually reserves for arguing with their father.

 

“Right.” 

 

There’s such a host of scornful, unsaid things in that single syllable that Sam flinches, looks out the window, says nothing at all as they park in the driveway, walk up to the door, go inside.

 

He does his homework in his room, never mind that it’s hard to balance books and notebooks on his lap or hunch over the nightstand for a writing surface.

 

Dean comes to the door after an hour or so, leans against the frame and stares, saying nothing, until Sam looks up.

 

“What?” He asks, clearly unhappy at being interrupted.

 

“You making dinner, or what?”

Sam tosses his book down hard enough that it bounces on the bedspread and then knocks against the wall and goes to move past his brother, who doesn’t shift from his place.

 

Instead of stopping, which is obviously what Dean wants, Sam shoves past him, knocking him aside with an elbow tucked low to his body, protecting his own middle.

 

Dean makes a sound and brings a hand up to his side, which is when Sam remembers that his brother’s hurt.

 

He’s already past Dean, though, already halfway across the living room, and though his steps falter a little with guilt, he doesn’t turn back, doesn’t apologize.

 

Dinner is silent, only the ordinary sounds of knife and fork, of poured milk and passed salt to break the tension.

 

Sam does the dishes without a word, and Dean disappears out the front door, keys jingling ostentatiously in one hand—his concession to letting Sam know he’s going somewhere.

 

Another hour of homework and a couple of extra chapters of his U.S. history book, and Sam’s more or less ready for bed.  Not much point in waiting up, since he’s not talking to his brother anyway.  Besides, Dean’s probably going to be drunk when he finally stumbles in sometime around one, just after the bars close.

 

Sam’s half right.

 

Dean is definitely drunk, but it’s only eleven-thirty by the blue read-out of his alarm clock when his brother collides with the door jamb with an audible, “Oof!” and says, “You awake,” in a stage whisper that would’ve woken Sam if he hadn’t already been brought out of sleep by the sound of the front door slamming.

 

“What is it, Dean?  I was asleep.” 

  
He sounds pissy, like a little kid, but he doesn’t care. 

 

“I was talkin’ to these guys at the bar.”

 

“Yeah?”  Sam inflects every ounce of his extreme disinterest into that one word.

 

“Yeah.”  Dean, apparently, is too stubborn to notice or too drunk to care.  “And they were tellin’ me about this new kid at the high school.”

 

Sam feels the first stirring of unease in his stomach, like icy fingers making a fist.

 

“Said he’s been causin’ all kinds of trouble, gettin’ into fights, makin’ friends with the wrong kind of people.”

 

Sam rolls his eyes in the dark, relieved to hear that this is what the town has to say.  It’s not nearly as bad as he’d expected.

 

“Say he’s gay, too, maybe dating the town freak, Eddy somethin’.”

His relief is short-lived.  He’d already decided that Dean didn’t need to know about Eddy, if only because his brother can be pretty observant when it comes to people and downright nosy when it comes to Sam, and he didn’t want Dean finding out about Eddy’s friend Eli until Sam had had a chance to determine what, exactly, Eli was.

 

Dean’s habit is to shoot first and never ask questions, but Sam’s not so sure Eli is a threat to Eddy or anybody else, and he doesn’t want to deprive the poor kid of his only friend if he doesn’t have to.

 

“Is it true, Sam?  Sammy?”

 

Dean seems to have noticed Sam’s extended failure to respond.  Sam can see him fumbling for the light switch, and he shields his eyes just before the overhead light goes on.

 

“Geez, Dean, I’m trying to sleep.  Can’t we have this conversation in the morning?”

 

But Dean isn’t going to be deterred, as is apparent from the way he takes a couple of unsteady steps toward Sam’s bed and then drops heavily onto the end of it, near Sam’s feet.

 

Given that there’s a second bed in the room, Sam finds this odd. 

  
When Dean drops a heavy, clumsy hand on his shin and pats it awkwardly a couple of times, Sam’s unease turns to real alarm.  Something is not right here.

 

Sam, already up on his elbows, pulls himself up to sit propped against the headboard.  Dean’s hand slides from his leg to rest on the bedspread.

 

“Is it true?” 

 

Dean’s not going to give up, and Sam searches his brother’s face for the acceptable answer.  He’s not sure what question he’s supposed to be answering, for one thing.  For another, he’s not sure how drunk his brother is.

 

Sam’s seen Dean drink to drive away anger, physical pain, loneliness, and a host of other ills.  Given their argument of earlier, it could be that his brother is just waiting for Sam to say the wrong thing so he can vent all of his frustration and worry on Sam.

 

“Sammy?”

 

Maudlin is not a mood Dean indulges very often, not even when he’s really drunk.  So the wistful note in Dean’s voice makes Sam take a long look at his brother.

 

Dean’s eyes are bloodshot, glassy.  The dark circles he’s had since he got hurt are pronounced by the paleness of his skin.  Sam can see clearly the constellation of pale freckles on his brother’s shadowed cheeks, even under the stubble he didn’t bother to shave away today.

 

But behind the physical evidence of Dean’s drinking and his obvious upset, there’s something deeper lurking, a kind of desperation that Sam can’t name and doesn’t know the source of.  It’s got something to do with him, he feels sure, with how he answers whatever question Dean’s actually asking.

 

Sam’s at sea, sails shredded, hold taking on water, and he shakes his head.

  
“Is what true, Dean?”

 

“You gay, Sammy?”

 

“What?” He coughs out, disbelievingly.  Of all the questions Dean might’ve been asking him, that’s not the one he expected.

 

Sam’s been to plenty of schools since he started high school, and he knows for a fact that the gay thing has come up at least three other times.  At least one of those times was when Dean was still sharing the hallowed halls with Sam.

 

He figured this question had long ago been laid to rest.

 

Certainly, he wasn’t expecting to have to answer it tonight.

 

Classic Winchester rules apply:  When you don’t want to answer the question, ask a different one.

 

“Why, Dean?  What does it matter?  Some guys you hardly know start talking shit about me in a bar and you decide to doubt me?”

 

Not only is he deflecting, he’s questioning Dean’s family loyalty, which is a low blow, Sam knows, but also necessary.  Dean’s too close to a few home truths for Sam’s comfort.

 

“No, Sammy.  No.  C’mon, I know it’s a bunch of bullshit.  It’s just…I thought you were doin’ okay at school.  You didn’t tell me you were havin’ trouble.”

 

Sam tries to smile the way Dean used to when he’d charm their father out of grounding him for some altercation at school.

 

“It’s nothing I can’t handle, Dean.  Besides, I gotta fight my own battles sometime, right?”

 

Since that’s a common theme in the Winchester war room, Dean nods a little uncertainly and claps Sam on the leg.

 

“Well, just remember not to get into too much trouble.  We’ve gotta stay here at least until Dad’s back, and we don’t want anybody tryin’ to call him about you, right?”

 

“I know the drill, Dean.”

 

“Alright, Sammy.  Alright.”

 

Dean’s fading, exhaustion and drink dragging his eyelids down, so Sam extricates himself from the blankets, helps Dean off the bed, and gets him out of his jacket.

 

“C’mon.  Let’s get you to bed.”

 

“’m alright, Sam.  I can do it.”

 

Having said that, Dean just stands in the center of the small room, swaying to some internal rhythm.

 

Sam drops Dean’s jacket onto the chest at the end of his brother’s bed and guides Dean to the edge of his mattress.

 

“Let me get your boots.”

 

It’s as he’s kneeling to unlace Dean’s boots—a painful exercise for Dean himself, and one that Sam’s glad to do—that Dean adds yet another layer of strange to the night’s already odd events.

 

His brother puts his hand on the back of Sam’s bent head, not pushing or petting, just resting, heavy and warm, fingers spanning the back of Sam’s skull.

 

It’s almost like Dean wants to be sure of Sam, to see for himself that his little brother is right there.

 

Sam hesitates, fingers frozen on Dean’s laces, wondering what he should do or say.

 

He settles for continuing his work as though nothing’s happened.

 

Dean’s hand moves to the back of Sam’s neck as Sam slides off first one boot and then the second.  It’s warm and reassuring, for all that it’s also weird, and Sam feels a heaviness and heat spreading through his belly and chest at the pressure of Dean’s hand there.

 

Finally, he has no choice but to look up, if only to get out from the bracket of Dean’s embracing hand and stand up to help Dean under the covers.

 

When he does, he sees something naked on Dean’s face, an expression so open that Sam can’t believe it, blinks it away to look again, sure he’s getting it wrong.

 

Dean looks lost and confused, like Sam’s not the person he expected to see looking up from his knees before him.

 

“Sammy?”

 

Sam decides it’s the drinking, that and Dean’s recent injuries, doing the talking, for he’s sure that in all their years he has never heard that tone from his brother’s mouth.

 

Dean sounds like he might cry, like he can’t quite express the anguish he’s feeling without tears in his throat.

 

“Go to sleep, Dean.  You’re drunk,” he says softly, ducking out from under Dean’s hand and standing as quickly as he can, putting an encouraging hand against his brother’s left shoulder and pressing.

 

He doesn’t want to hurt Dean, but he does want him to go to sleep right the hell now.  Dean’s freaking him out.

 

Dean succumbs to Sam’s insistence, and Sam covers him with the blanket, walks over to the wall, shuts out the light, and returns to his own bed.

 

He’s almost asleep, the clock reading dead midnight, when he hears, “Sammy?” in a rough whisper from across the room.

 

“What, Dean?”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

Sam’s not sure what Dean’s sorry for, but he figures Dean will probably have forgotten it all by morning anyway, so he says, “It’s okay, Dean.  Go to sleep.”

 

“Okay.”

 

That night Sam dreams he’s in free-fall, but before he can hit the ground, he sees Eddy and Eli below him, growing larger as he plunges at terrible speed.

 

He tries to shout out to them, to get them to move, but they do not seem to hear him.

 

When he slams into them, he hears the strangest keening sound that follows him into the wide-eyed, heaving-breathed waking he always experiences after such a dream.

 

The keening turns out to be Led Zeppelin, which is blasting from his alarm clock radio.

 

In the next bed, Dean groans and mumbles into his pillow.  Sam groans, too, but shuts off the music and manages to get up.  He thinks about calling in sick and then remembers that he promised he’d see Eddy again.

 

Plus, he wants to hit the library after school, see what he can find out about tulpas.  He had a thought that maybe Eli is some sort of strange thought-form, conjured out of Eddy’s grief at his dad’s death and his mother’s slow decay.

 

He leaves a note for Dean to let him know that he’s going to the town library after school and hopes that his brother doesn’t remember much of what went on last night.

 

His day at school is marked by a few changes.

 

First, there’s no greeting party under the stairs, which is refreshing, nor does he even see Munsy, Jerry, and the stooges in the halls.

 

Second, he doesn’t have gym class.

 

Third, he has two companions at lunch, Eddy and Eli.  When the skinny, acne-riddled boy joins him, Sam hears the quality of sound in the cafeteria around them change, speculation and scorn making the sibilant whispers somehow threatening.

 

Sam ignores it, gives Eddy a little smile of welcome, nods to Eli, who nods back, and keeps eating his sandwich, keeps reading the worn and yellowed copy of _Huck Finn_ he discovered he needed for English class only this morning.  Thankfully, the school library had several copies.  And, of course, Sam has read it before.

 

Eddy says nothing while they eat, but when Sam balls up his paper bag and closes his book, the other boy asks, “Do you like it?,” indicating the book with a jerk of his chin.

 

“Yeah, I do,” Sam answers, considering the cover, which depicts a straw-haired boy in overalls poling a raft beside a tall black man. “I’ve read it before,” he adds, though he’s not sure why.

 

“Me, too.  I like reading.  Me and Eli read a lot.”

 

This observation has Sam considering Eddy’s silent companion a little more closely.  Eli has dark hair almost identical in shade and shape to Eddy’s own, but his eyes are a pale and piercing grey-blue, where Eddy’s are mud brown and utterly ordinary.  His skin is clear, very pale, his cheekbones high and eyes tilted slightly in the frame of his face.  There’s something old-fashioned about his appearance, which Sam can’t describe but that he feels, nonetheless, and though the boy is dressed in more or less the usual way—jeans and a sweatshirt, sneakers—Sam can’t help but feel that Eli is out of place somehow.

 

He snorts inwardly to himself at this brilliant observation.

 

_Gee, d’ya think the phantom kid might be out of place?_

 

He decides to try something, wondering if it’s a good idea even as he asks, “So, Eli, where do you live?”

 

Eddy startles a little in his seat across from Sam and darts an alarmed glance at Eli.  He starts to say something, eyes frantic, when Eli answers.

 

“I live with Eddy.  My parents are dead.”

 

“Oh,” Sam says, feigning surprise.  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

 

Eli’s shrug is eloquent; it suggests that he’s had a long time to get over the loss of his family.

 

“Do you have any other friends besides Eddy?”

 

Eli shakes his head.  “I like to read,” he says then, like that explains everything.

 

Sam nods as if this is all perfectly ordinary, to be orphaned and alone in the world and to be living with some kid he met on a playground, friendship based on the strength of their mutual love of books.

 

“We should go,” Eddy inserts quietly, hands nervously crushing and then smoothing out his lunch bag.  Sam watches the pair walk away, watches the way Eli keeps a step behind and just to one side of Eddy, the way the boy moves out of the way for approaching people as though those people would bump into him and not go through him if they were to come into contact.

 

He files it all away to take out and consider in his afternoon classes, which pass with a minimum of stress and almost no homework.  Sam thinks that Green Bank is going to be pretty easy as schools go, at least in terms of academic work.

 

The tall kid in the throwback shades is waiting for Sam when he gets to his locker at the end of the day, and Sam stifles an audible sigh as he stops a few paces from the boy, who’s blocking Sam’s locker door.

 

“What do you want?” Sam asks wearily, already sick of this particular scenario.

 

“We know all about you and your freak boyfriend, Winchester.”

 

A passing thought has Sam wondering if this kid has an older brother who maybe hangs out in a bar downtown.

 

To that end, he asks, “What’s your name?”

 

The unexpected question puts the kid off-balance, which is clear from the way he hesitates in responding.

 

When he does, it’s with more than the usual bluster Sam’s come to expect of such types.

 

“Why the fuck should you care?  I’m not going to go out with you, fudgepacker.”

 

The crowd that always gathers at such spectacles snickers in unison at the rejoinder, like the kid’s a bona fide wit.

 

“Why?” Sam inquires, as if they’re having a perfectly civil conversation, two guys passing the time, “Do you already have a boyfriend?”

 

If Bobby Munsy is a clumsy fighter, this kid is downright incompetent, and Sam moves so easily aside at his wide and wild swing that the kid’s own forward momentum propels him into a locker.

 

Sam’s several feet away, untouched and laughing, when Mr. Traymore breaks through the crowd of onlookers and says, “Winchester, Bellamy, my office.  Now!”

 

The only thing that differs about the Assistant Principal’s office this time around is the appearance of the girl waiting to see him.  This one is blonde and petite, blue eyes red from crying, one hand twisted in her purse strap.

 

Inside, Sam takes a seat as instructed beside the other kid—Steve Bellamy, as it turns out—and listens while Traymore talks about responsibility and working things out without violence and consequences and being grown up.

 

When the administrator is done, he levels a stern look at Sam and says, “I warned you, Mr. Winchester, about causing trouble on my campus.”

 

Sam nods, saying nothing. 

 

“Nothing to say for yourself?”

 

Sam shrugs.  He could explain that Bellamy started it, called him names, took the first swing, but he’s already tired of the whole scene, and besides, Winchesters aren’t rats, no matter what the circumstance might be. 

 

“Fine.  You’ll spend the next five days in detention, starting tomorrow.  If I have any more trouble with you, I’m going to make your father come to my office and sit down with us.  Got it?”

 

Sam nods tightly, a little worried now.  Two strikes against him.  What are the chances he can keep a third from ghosting past him before his dad returns from his hunt in upper Minnesota?

 

“You can go, Mr. Winchester.  Mr. Bellamy and I have some things to discuss.”

 

Sam takes from Traymore’s tone that Steve Bellamy is a regular fixture in the A.P.’s office.  He gives the kid a look as he rises from his chair, and Bellamy returns a very grudging nod, like he’s grateful Sam covered for him.

 

Sam considers that maybe he won’t make that third strike after all.  At least, it won’t be Bellamy pitching it.

 

The Impala isn’t out front when Sam exits half an hour late, and for a second he’s concerned that maybe Dean had parked in the student lot and come looking for him until he remembers that he’d left a note about going to the library.

 

The town library is housed in a converted church, the choir loft an open-air reading room where the periodicals are kept, rows of books in neat aisles where the pews once stood on the creaky wooden floor.  Where the altar once held the place of honor, there is now a circulation desk, behind which is an old woman, hair done up in the requisite grey bun, wire-framed glasses firmly planted near the end of her nose and held to her person by a glittering chain.  She’s wearing a sweater set and reading a paperback novel, which, when she closes it and puts it carefully down, Sam can see is not the romance he was expecting but a Louis L’Amour western, complete with a rider on a rearing horse raising a long gun at some distant, unseen threat.

 

“Can I help you?” She asks, and her voice is younger than her appearance, a pleasant sound that carries over the silent, breathing space of the church-cum-library.

 

“I was wondering if you had any books on the supernatural?” 

 

“Hmmm…let me see.  Did you try the card catalogue?”

 

Sam nods.  He did.  No luck.  “Just a couple of books of ghost stories and two collections of Lovecraft,” he explains.

  
“Well, now, let me think.  Have you tried the internet?”

 

Sam gives her a startled look and she laughs, catching his surprise.

 

“The computers are over there, in the Lady’s Chapel.”  She nods in the direction of an alcove to the right of the circulation desk, a space hidden by a long shelf of reference books.

 

“Thank you,” he says, grateful once again for advances in technology.  He hadn’t been expecting much of the public library in a town the size of Green Bank, and the computers are a welcome surprise.  He hadn’t wanted to try the school’s computer lab for his search, worried about filters and spyware installed by a suspicious administration, but he figures he’s okay here.

 

Though the connection is slow, Sam is able to surf in peace, no one else apparently interested in using the library’s three outdated PCs or dot matrix printer.  Sam sighs at the ratcheting repetition of printing pages and keeps up his search.

 

When he’s gotten as much as he thinks he can use, he logs off, thanks the librarian, and heads for the reading loft, grateful to find it unoccupied except for a white-haired old gentleman in a sweater vest nodding over his evening paper.

 

Sam loses track of time, then, captivated by explanations of tulpas, egregores, and shadow people, convinced pretty soon that Eli can be none of those.

 

He moves on to spirit manifestations, wishing not for the first time that he had access to Dad’s journal, and it’s only when the lights around him brighten with the encroaching winter’s night outside that he realizes he’s been too long at it.

 

“Shit,” he mutters to himself, and the old man gives him a disapproving glare, either because Sam had woken him or because of the word, he’s not sure.

  
All he is sure of is that Dean’s going to kill him.

 

Green Bank isn’t a big place, but even so, the library is on the opposite end of town from Belknap Street, where they live, and it takes Sam twenty minutes to jog home, book-bag banging awkwardly between his shoulder blades as he does.

 

Their house is three from the corner that he takes in a burst of extra speed, and he can see from there that the driveway is empty.

 

“Shit!” he says, louder this time, making the final push to the front door, inserting his key with adrenalin-shaking hands, going immediately to the kitchen table, which has always been the place they leave notes for each other.

 

“Stay put,” the note says, nothing else.  Just the two words in Dean’s distinctive, angled scrawl.

 

Sam drops into a kitchen chair and just breathes for awhile, trying to both bring his heart rate down and decide what he should do next.

 

After a few minutes of trying to decipher what tone the two words were written in, Sam spares a glance around the kitchen.

 

There’s a plate, a fork, a knife, and a cup in the drying rack by the sink, sure signs that Dean has already eaten dinner.  Sam notices that there’s a calendar on the refrigerator, the kind with a magnet on the back, cheap paper pages, and a banner across the top advertising the insurance agency from which Dean likely swiped it.

 

Sam’s considers the date, and he realizes with a heart-zinging start that it’s January 20.  Dean’s birthday’s in four days.  He might’ve forgotten.  Such is the nature of celebrations in their family.  Everyone remembers Sam’s, of course…at least six months out.  But Dean’s has gone unnoticed at least once in Sam’s recent memory.  He tells himself he’ll have to do something nice for Dean.

 

He’s not sure how long he sits there pondering gift ideas—the time function on the old microwave in one corner of the counter is busted, flashes 8:88 perpetually—but it’s full dark when he hears the growl of the Impala pulling into the driveway.

 

He doesn’t get up when he hears the front door slam open, just calls out, “Here!” when Dean barks out, “Sammy?”

 

Dean storms into the kitchen a second later, eyes angry.  “Where the hell have you been?”

 

“Library, Dean.  I left a note.”

 

“I know you left a note, Sam.  But you’ve been gone for hours.  What the fuck were you doing at the library since three o’clock?”  
  


Sam could correct Dean’s misconception about Sam’s timetable.  He was in Mr. Traymore’s office until 3:30, after all, and then it took him time to walk to and jog home from the library.  But he doesn’t say any of this, only, “I’m sorry, Dean.”

 

He doesn’t sound especially contrite, but then, he’s not, really.  Dean worries too much, and Sam’s old enough now to be out at dusk alone.  Besides, he can take care of himself.

 

Dean sinks into the chair across the table from Sam, runs a hand over his mouth, and blows out a loud breath.

 

“Christ, Sam, I thought somebody’d jumped you or something.”

 

“What?  Why?”  He lets his voice suggest how ridiculous Dean’s statement sounds.

 

“Those guys at the bar last night said you were pretty unpopular.  One of ‘em suggested there might be kids from the school lookin’ to settle the score with you for some fight you had on Monday.”

 

Now he’s impatient and a little nervous, realizing Dean probably remembers more of last night than Sam had hoped he would.  His stomach jumps and he starts to feel a little sick, which he combats by saying,

 

“Jesus, Dean, I can handle myself.  And I think you have too much time on your hands or something.  Since when do you get all worked up about my reputation at school?”

 

Dean levels a stern look.  “In a town this size, your reputation is all you’ve got, Sam.  You _know_ that.”

 

And Sam does.  He does.  He’s grown up in towns just like Green Bank, knows exactly what makes them tick, what makes people talk.

 

But it’s never been a big deal before that he’s having trouble with some assholes at school. 

 

Then again…

 

“Wait a minute.  Is this because I got into a fight, Dean, or because you think I’m gay?”

 

“What?”  Now it’s Dean’s turn to bluster and bluff.  “No!  No.  It’s got nothing to do with you being…  I mean, you’re not, right?  So it doesn’t matter.  That doesn’t matter.  I just don’t want you gettin’ into too much trouble.  Gotta keep a low profile until Dad gets back.”

 

Sam nods, hearing more in Dean’s answer than the actual words, sensing that the whole subject of Sam’s sexuality makes Dean profoundly uncomfortable.

 

Enough that he’s up out of his seat and asking Sam if he wants some dinner, almost like he’s forgotten that Sam was late getting home in his haste to find a more innocuous topic of conversation.

 

“Are you a homophobe, Dean?”

 

It’s unfair of Sam to push his brother, and not very smart, either.  The set of Dean’s shoulders, the way he’s making a lot of noise opening cupboards and the fridge door, getting out sandwich fixings, the way he’s saying something about the pool tables at Earl’s B & G—all of these are sure tells that Dean wants to forget they’ve been having anything like a serious discussion.

 

Sam knows better than to bait his brother when Dean’s deflecting like this, but he can’t seem to help himself.  Suddenly, it matters a lot to Sam what his brother really thinks.

 

Sam expects to hear louder banging, more obnoxious noise to cover his question, either to give Dean time to think up a snappy comeback or to allow him an out to ignore the question altogether.

 

So when Dean turns slowly from his place at the counter and leans back against it, shoves his hands into his jean pockets, and stares down at the floor between his boots, Sam’s a little surprised.

 

He’s a lot surprised by what Dean says next.

 

“I just think…we’ve already got so many strikes against us, Sam.  Seems like being gay would be one too many.  I mean…if we had a choice, you know?”

 

Dean’s expression when he looks up at Sam is careful, like he’s not sure of Sam’s reaction to his words.  And Sam, for his part, isn’t sure how to feel, either.  He notices that Dean hasn’t really answered his question.  On the other hand, he’s said way more than Sam ever expected on the subject.

 

Too, he’s used the collective pronoun, “we,” like gayness is a hereditary trait that runs in the Winchester line.

 

He’s pretty sure Dean isn’t gay—he could exhaust himself naming all the girls Dean has been with since he was Sam’s age—but Sam appreciates the solidarity.

 

And yet…

 

“Dean, what makes you think I’m gay?”

 

Dean shrugs, doesn’t look at Sam.

 

“Dean?”

 

  1. You’re not—“



 

Sam hears the word Dean leaves out—“normal”—and looks down at the table.

 

It’s true, but it still hurts to not-hear it from his brother.

 

“Just because I’m not a horn-dog like you doesn’t mean I’m gay, Dean.  Maybe I’m just…quiet about it, or something.”

 

But he’s not.

 

Sam’s _not_ quiet about dating and girls.  He doesn’t secretly lust after the blonde in his calculus class.  He doesn’t jerk off in the shower to images of Jessica Alba.

 

He _is_ gay.

 

The discovery of that particular nail in his normal coffin came over the course of an especially painful three-month stretch in his freshman year.  They were in Illinois somewhere—Sam refuses to remember the name of the school—and he had found a niche among the quiet kids who nobody bothers to pick on.

 

One of them, Alex Mendez, went out of his way to help Sam get caught up in advanced trig, a class he’d tested into but didn’t have much experience with.  Alex was a shy, quiet, dark-haired, sloe-eyed boy with a killer smile and a wicked sense of humor that he kept mostly to himself.

 

He used to make Sam laugh until milk came out of his nose.

 

Sometime around the second week of school, Sam realized that he looked forward to spending time with Alex way more than he should for average guy friends.  Then he realized that he’d get a warm feeling in his belly when Alex smiled at something Sam said.

 

After that, lunch became an agonizing gauntlet of opportunities to accidentally out himself.

 

Gym, which he blessedly didn’t share with Alex, became a shameful exercise in not looking at the other guys as they got changed.

 

Summer grew into an impossible-to-reach oasis of isolation.  He couldn’t wait to get on the road with his family, put the town—and especially Alex—behind him.

 

Since then, Sam had gotten used to being an outcast in yet another way and had realized that:  (a) he didn’t have to tell anyone he was gay; and (b) it wouldn’t make him any less popular if people knew, since he was generally considered a freak anyway.

 

Of course, the one exception to those two rules had to do with his family, to whom Sam has always belonged, even when he sometimes feels like an outsider. 

 

This secret has never made him feel more alone than right at that moment, with Dean standing less than six feet away giving Sam a steady, waiting look, like he already knows what Sam’s going to say.

 

“I _am_ gay.”

 

He says it softly, not because it’s hard to say—though god knows it is, maybe the hardest thing he’s ever said, _ever_ —not because he’s ashamed—he’s not, can’t be, not of something he can’t help, can’t change, didn’t choose. 

 

Softly because he hopes maybe Dean won’t hear it, or that he’ll pretend he hasn’t and they’ll go back to the deflection and gentle deception of daily life.

 

Dean nods, jaw tightening, and takes in a breath, like he’s just heard something that requires some adjustment on his part.

 

Sam watches his brother’s face and waits, wondering if things will ever be the same again.

 

Dean shifts against the counter, pushes himself upright, turns back and resumes making a sandwich out of white bread and cold cuts.

  
“You want mustard?”

 

Sam takes in a breath that turns into a nervous laugh.  “Uh…yeah.”

 

Dean nods again.  Clears his throat.  Works quietly with his back to Sam for a minute.

 

Then, “It’s okay, Sam.  It’s okay that you’re gay.”

 

Sam’s grateful that his brother’s got his back turned, for the tears that come up suddenly in his eyes require dashing away, and he has to swallow several times, painfully, to keep from sobbing with relief.

 

By the time Dean delivers him two sandwiches, a pickle, and some chips, he’s more or less composed, and when Dean slides a glass of milk across the table and sits down at the other chair, he finds that he can eat without choking and even smile at his big brother.

 

“So…are you seeing somebody?”

 

Dean tries for casual and almost makes it, too.  Sam can hear the panic in there, though, the way Dean isn’t sure he’s ready for Sam’s answer.

 

He takes his time chewing the all-at-once tasteless sandwich and shakes his head, swallows a big gulp of milk, wipes his mouth with a napkin.

 

“No.  No, I’m not.  Popular opinion to the contrary.”

 

“So who’s this Eddy kid, then, that people keep talking about?”

 

“He’s just this guy, this nerd, I guess, who gets picked on a lot.  I sorta helped him out on Monday, and these other guys weren’t real happy about it.”

 

Dean started nodding halfway through Sam’s explanation, and Sam sees in his brother’s face a wry recognition.

 

“Sammy, Sammy, Sammy.  Always picking up strays.”

 

Sam forces himself to laugh like that’s exactly what’s going on, thinks to himself how Eli’s really the stray to be concerned about, not Eddy, and takes another big bite of the sandwich he doesn’t especially want anymore.  If his mouth’s full, he can’t answer questions.

 

When the meal’s done, Sam takes care of his plates, gets Dean a beer from the fridge when he asks, and then makes an excuse about homework he doesn’t actually have so that he can leave the kitchen before anything else comes up.

 

He almost makes it, too, except for Dean’s, “Sam?” as he gets to the living room.

 

Sam turns around, takes in the way the dim light of the low bulb over the sink washes Dean’s color out, darkens the hollows and paints shadows on the planes of his face.  Dean looks a lot older and more tired than Sam can ever remember seeing him, and he feels a coldness around his heart to see his brother looking like that and to know that he must be responsible, at least in part, for putting the look there.

 

“We’ll keep it between us, right?”

 

Sam knows Dean means Dad, swallows convulsively, almost a reflex when he imagines his father’s reaction to Sam’s secret, nods gratefully but can’t get a word out.

 

He actually attempts to get ahead in calc, but the formulae make no sense and every proof starts to look identical to the last, so he gives up, tosses his math book aside, rolls on to his stomach, and cradles his chin on his folded hands.

 

Sam guesses he fell asleep like that, for the next thing he knows, Dean’s tugging off Sam’s boots in a strange reversal of last night’s events.

 

“I can do it,” he mumbles, trying to sit up.  He’s on his back, shirt rucked up his ribs and twisted around him. 

 

Dean says, “I got it,” and gives him a gentle shove to keep him down.

 

Sam might say thank you, but he isn’t sure, and the next thing he knows, he’s free-falling, spread-eagled, through a stormy sky, coming down so fast that he’s actually out-falling the raindrops.

 

The ground rushes up to meet him, and he has a second to think that he’s going to drown in thick mud before he remembers that the landing will kill him.

 

He sits up with a gasping start, sweat on his forehead, arms flailing like he’s trying to dig himself out of a soft, soupy grave.

 

“Hey,” Dean says from the other bed.  Sam, still confused, says, “Dean?”

 

“Who else would it be?”

 

Sam manages to make out the time.  3:22am.

 

“You okay?”  Dean sounds half amused, half concerned.

  
“Yeah,” Sam says, laying back down and blowing out a gust of relieved breath.  “Yeah,” he repeats, closing his eyes and trying to stop the sense of vertigo from making his stomach flip.

 

He listens to Dean’s breathing even out and segue into soft snores, comforted by his brother’s nearness, even if he is wondering why Dean’s taken to sleeping in their shared room again.  Sleep eventually steals over him, though, and he awakens to Bad Company on the alarm clock radio and Dean’s irritated grump from the other bed.

  
“Shut off the alarm, buttface.”

 

Sam smirks as he “accidentally” turns it up full volume before shutting it off and gets a pillow in his face for his trouble.

 

He hasn’t been this happy for a Friday in a long time, and he maintains that good feeling until he shuts the Impala door and Dean says, “Pick you up at three.”

 

Which is when he remembers he has detention.  He spins around, taps the window and then opens the door again, leans down to say, “I have to stay after.  I have a project to work on with Mindy, my chem. lab partner.  I have to catch up.  It might be the next few days.”

 

Dean rolls his eyes.  “What time, geek?”

 

“Four-thirty.”

 

Sam actually isn’t sure when detention lets out, but he figures there probably aren’t too many teachers who’d agree to proctor much later than that, even if they do get paid.

 

Maybe it’s that Sam’s reputation for holding his own has finally circulated through the school.  Or maybe it’s that Bobby Munsy’s apparently absent and Steve Bellamy actually gives him another grudging nod as they pass in the hallway on the way to homeroom, but the other kids seem to have settled on ignoring Sam unless he does something interesting.

 

Even the awkward threesome (well, twosome to the rest of the world, Sam guesses) at their lunch table doesn’t seem to attract as much attention, and Sam finds himself enjoying his conversation with Eddy about _The Catcher in the Rye_ , which both of them have read twice and have to read again for English.

 

Eli doesn’t say much, though now and then he laughs at one of Eddy’s keener observations—for all that the kid’s a social misfit and a little intense, he does have a sharp mind and remarkable recall—and Sam almost forgets that he’s not real, not human.

 

Almost.

 

Except that once in awhile, Eli seems to be listening to something Sam can’t hear, something Eddy isn’t saying, either.  And it’s creepy as hell to watch the other boy’s attention fix on some internal sound.

  
Sam almost asks him what he’s listening to, but he thinks better of it.  He needs to know more before he can hazard making any overt moves on Eli.

 

Detention, Sam discovers, runs from 3:00 to 4:00 in an oddly cramped classroom at the end of the hallway that leads to the aud.  Once a bandroom, Sam guesses from the seating arrangement, it’s now mostly used for punitive measures, he suspects, given the way that there’s absolutely nothing in the room except blank walls. 

 

Even the clock is gone, nothing but a hole in the plaster bleeding red and black wires to indicate that it was ever there.

 

Mrs. Jardin, apparently a French teacher, if her affectation of an accent is any indicator, explains in a bored, seen-it-all voice that there will be no talking, no sleeping, no studying.  No activity of any kind for one hour.  Students will sit up, hands on the desk, eyes ahead. 

 

Two minutes in to what is going to be an interminable hour, the door to the room bangs open and Steve Bellamy saunters in, trademark shades firmly in place.

 

Sam wonders if teachers just gave up trying to get them away from him.

 

He gives Sam a wry smirk, like the two of them are in on a joke together, and then takes a seat, pushing his chair back against the floor and shoving the desk away at the same time to make the most noise possible.

 

Mrs. Jardin says nothing, though Sam sees by the way her lips tighten and her eyes squinch up at the edges that she’s seen this particular show before.

 

He thinks that he never, ever wants to be a high school teacher.

 

Sam’s done a lot of waiting in his day.  From stakeouts on would-be lairs to graveyard crouches in the cold, dark night, he’s spent a good part of his life to this point having to occupy his mind while still being alert to his surroundings.

 

So while detention is about as dull an activity as he can imagine, he doesn’t let his imagination linger on it.  Instead, he considers Eli, calling up an image of the kid in his head and mulling over his qualities of character and his seemingly ordinary nature.

 

He certainly doesn’t seem like any spirit manifestation Sam’s ever encountered.  No flickering lights, scratching in the walls, inconvenient telekinesis, jerky, Japanese-style movement.

 

Nothing at all to indicate that he’s got ectoplasm where his blood should be.

 

He’s got to be missing something.

 

When detention comes to an end, Mrs. Jardin just as grateful to be out of the stifling silence of the room as the rest of them, judging from how quickly she departs the area, Steve stops Sam in the hall, waits until the other unfortunates have passed them, and then says, “Thanks for not ratting me out.”

 

Sam shrugs a shoulder like it’s no big deal. “No problem.”

 

“Traymore’s a jerk.”

 

Sam nods.  He doesn’t really think the AP is so bad, but then, he’s got a lot to compare him with.  Bellamy probably doesn’t.

 

“Look, just forget what I said about you before, okay?  I can be an ass.”

 

This admission, coming out of the blue as it does and said with something approaching actual sincerity, surprises Sam, but he recovers quickly enough.

 

“No harm done.  I mean, it’s not like my reputation was ruined, or anything.”

 

Steve laughs.  “True…  So, you wanta hang out or something?”

 

Sam gives the other boy a startled look, catches in his expression something he can’t quite name, something that makes him feel a little excited and a little afraid.  Or maybe it’s just the cop shades mirroring his own look back at him.

 

But since he’s a Winchester—and more importantly, since he’s got twenty minutes to kill and he doesn’t feel like reading any more history—he says, “Yeah, sure.”

 

Bellamy takes him to a little room off the aud, probably once used to house the audio system before such technology got smaller and more portable, and offers him a joint, which he refuses, and a can of pop from a small fridge, which he accepts.

 

“This is the techies’ room,” Steve explains.  “I used to be on the crew, cut my own key before I quit.”

 

“Nice deal,” Sam says admiringly.  He appreciates practical larceny, given his own ample experience with it.

 

They talk about nothing at all, the way most teenagers can, avoiding any of the more sensitive subjects—like Eddy, Sam’s family, Steve’s bouts of assholery—until Sam glances at his watch and sees that Dean’s probably waiting.

 

“Gotta go.  Brother’s picking me up.”

 

“Oh, hey, yeah.  He’s got that sweet black car, right?  An Impala?”

 

Sam smiles, used to Dean’s baby getting such adulation.  “Yeah.  It’s our dad’s, but we get to use it when he’s on a job.”

 

“Cool.  Maybe I can get a ride sometime?”

 

Sam thinks that’s unlikely, but he says, “Sure.”

 

“Cool.  Later.”

 

Dean’s waiting at the curb, as usual, but though his eyes are smiling at Sam, Sam sees them flick over his shoulder, which makes Sam look, too, to see Steve standing on the top steps.  Even from this distance, Sam can see the way the other boy admires the car, the way his mouth is wide in the kind of smile that speaks of desire.

 

“That Eddy?”

 

Sam rolls his eyes, thinks, _Nice try, Dean_ , says, “Steve Bellamy.  He’s got the same chem. teacher.”

 

He lets his brother think they’re working on the same labs and hopes he doesn’t notice the lingering sweet stench of pot on his clothes.

 

Sam is of two minds about weekends.

 

Part of him is always grateful to be out of the crucible of high school, free to be himself, hang out at home, maybe help Dean with something hunting-related.

 

But part of him gets bored with two days of nothing to do, nowhere to be, and despite that Dean keeps him busy with workouts and errands, he still itches to be doing something else.

  
He guesses for as much as he sometimes resents their life on the road, he also misses it, maybe even needs it. 

 

So when Dean gets up from the dinner table on Saturday night and says, “Get your coat on, Sammy, we’re going out,” Sam doesn’t even ask where they’re going, though ordinarily he would.

 

“Leave the dishes,” Dean adds, and that should be a red flag for Sam.  But he’s restless, hasn’t got any homework left to do, and doesn’t feel like sitting through another spectacularly bad SciFi original.

 

So he slides into the cold Impala, gives Dean a curious glance, and keeps his questions to himself as they tool the short length of Main Street and head out to the north of town.

 

Ten minutes later, they pull into the gravel parking lot of a road house, a rough, barn-board building set hard up against the trees, parking lot illuminated by two big, buzzing sodium lights, scree of fiddles already audible even over the last sounds of the Impala’s engine dying out.

 

There’s a line of trucks in front of the place, every one of them with a rifle rack along the back window, several with naked-girl mudflaps, two sporting the rebel flag.

 

Sam rolls his eyes to himself—they’re in freakin’ Minnesota; any further north is _Canada_ , for fuck’s sake—but says nothing, just catches up so he’s close behind and to one side of his brother when they enter the place.

 

Sam sees the pool tables even through the crush of dancers stomping lines on the sawdust-strewn floor in front of the raised stage where the band is playing George Strait and understands almost at once why they’ve come here.

 

Dean can hustle, and Sam can watch his back.

 

“Dean,” he starts, a warning note in his voice apparent even in the raucous din of drunken “cowboys” in various degrees of debauchery.

 

“Just a friendly game or two, Sam, nothing to worry about.”

 

Sam would call bullshit, but he knows how bored Dean must be, way more restless than Sam, who at least has school to occupy him.  Plus, they can probably use the money.  And Monday _is_ Dean’s birthday.

 

So he takes up his usual sentinel position, trying to look at the same time dangerous and unthreatening, a neat trick they’ve honed over the years since Sam came into his height.

 

Dean clears the table, twice for one diehard loser and a third time for a second man maybe a little too drunk for the game, and he’s just about to put his pool cue down when a voice from behind Sam says, “Well, if it isn’t the new guy!”

 

Sam turns, a ribbon of unease unspooling in his gut, only to find a tall guy he’s never seen before approaching Dean with his hand out.

 

“Dave, good to see you!”  They exchange the usual gruff remarks, and then Dean is turning to Sam and saying, “Hey, Dave, I want you to meet my brother, Sam.”

 

“Well, you’re a tall one, aren’t you?” He observes, shaking Sam’s hand firmly.  “Remind me of my son, Steve.”

 

The penny drops, and Sam has a moment of suspended time, when the infinite possibilities of every choice in the universe converge on what he says next.

 

Dean saves him the trouble. “Yeah, sure, Sammy knows Steve.  From the high school.”

 

Dave Bellamy gives Sam a speculative look, and Sam nods.  “We have the same chem. teacher.”  It’s a lie, but one he has to maintain for Dean’s benefit.  What’re the chances that Dave Bellamy knows his son’s class schedule, anyway?

 

It takes the older man a second longer to get to the same page Sam’s on, and Sam uses that second to shoot Dean a death glare.  But Dean is wearing a calculating expression that Sam has seen on many hunts, and suddenly he understands what his brother is doing.

 

“Wait a minute…you’re the new kid?  But that can’t be.  I heard that you were—“

 

Granted that people in small towns are often rude behind your back, Sam’s experience suggests that they’re rarely rude to your face, unless they’re adolescents, in which case, all bets are off.

 

Dave fumbles for a recovery, which Dean does not provide, and eventually manages a stiff, “I hope you’re settling in.”

 

He’s gone before Dean can even finish his, “See you later.”

 

“Nice, Dean,” Sam hisses at his brother, getting close enough to smell the beer on Dean’s breath.  “Is that why you brought me here, really?”

 

Dean laughs.  “Relax, Sammy.  I didn’t know the jerk was gonna be here, but I’m not missing an opportunity when I see it.”

 

“I don’t need you fighting my battles for me, Dean.  I don’t need him going home and telling Steve to be nice to me because my big brother is really cool.”

 

Dean rolls his eyes and sets the pool cue down, indicating to a waiting couple that the table’s all theirs.

 

“Seriously, Sam, you’re blowing this way out of proportion.  I just thought it might be good for the jerk to see who it is, exactly, that he’s been badmouthing for the past week, that’s all.  And if it means less trouble for you at school, what are you bitching about?”

 

Sam concedes—only to himself—that Dean’s probably right on all counts.  But he says, “Can we go now?” and is irritated with himself when it comes out whiney.

 

Dean forestalls further conversation once in the car by turning up Black Sabbath until Sam is pretty sure his teeth are rattling loose of their sockets.

 

He says nothing to Dean when they get inside, and to the sounds of a bad horror movie, he gets ready for bed and climbs under the covers.  He hopes he doesn’t hear the same shrieking in his dreams.

 

They reach a détente over frozen waffles and instant bacon.  Dean passes Sam the OJ and calls him a bitch, Sam responds with the expected rejoinder, and things go on more or less as normal until Dean goes out and comes back with a Sunday paper.

 

For years, they’ve wrestled over who gets to read the comics first.  Their dad would always get the paper, always go right to the obits and police blotter, the less useful parts left for the boys to fight over.

 

And it became routine enough for them to work off the sugar from their morning cereal by rolling around on one bed or another—and sometimes on the floor—to see who could get to the funnies first.

 

So when Sam looks up to see Dean standing at the end of the couch, paper in his hand and eyes on Sam, he expects the usual routine, even mutes the cartoons he’s been half-watching.

 

Dean doesn’t tease him, though, doesn’t pull the colorful paper from the fat stack of the Sunday edition, doesn’t make comments calling into question Sam’s manhood or his fighting skills.

  
He simply peels the comics free of the heavier classifieds and tosses them on the couch near Sam’s thigh.

 

This casual change hurts Sam unexpectedly, and he finds himself going through the possible reasons for Dean’s behavior in his head.

 

Every single explanation seems to stem from the same source, though, namely that Sam has changed, so this must, too.

 

Sam flips off the television, gets up from the couch, and goes to their room without so much as glancing at the comics or at his brother.

 

He’s sitting on the bed, staring at his hands and feeling sick—not angry, just sick, like he’s lost something he’ll never find again and it’s left a hollow place in his belly.  Dean comes to lean in the doorway like he has a hundred or a thousand times.

 

He’s got the comics dangling limply in one hand, the other hand jammed in his jeans pocket.

 

“Sammy—“ He starts, but Sam interrupts him, throat thick, tongue tripping on the words.

 

“You can’t touch me now, is that it Dean?  Afraid you’ll catch it somehow? Or are you afraid I might rub off on your leg or something while we wrestle?”

 

Dean chokes on his explosive, “No!” and Sam takes that for an affirmation.  Dean’s always loudest when he’s lying, Sam knows.

 

But then his brother says, quieter, “No, Sam, it’s not…god, it’s not that.  Okay?  I just…just give me a little time to get used to it is all.”

 

“I’m the same brother you kneed in the stomach last week to get to _Cathy_ and _Peanuts_ ,” Sam observes, eyes red, voice raw with unshed tears.  He hates that he sounds so weak.

 

“Bitch, you know I read it for the _Calvin and Hobbes_ classics.”

 

Sam risks a look at Dean’s face.  His brother is trying to smile, trying to take away the sting of this stupid rejection. 

 

Sam smiles back a little uncertainly.  “You’re a jerk,” he observes mildly, but there is some hurt in it, too.

 

Dean nods in agreement.  “I am.  But I’m your brother, and you have to put up with me, jerk or not.”

 

“Lucky me.”

 

The rest of the day passes like their usual downtime Sundays—2:00 old western on television, 4:00 pizza from the nearest place, a little training as dusk settles in on their tiny back yard. 

 

Dean can’t spar yet, not with his ribs in their current condition, so they settle on tossing knives at a cardboard target nailed to the only tree in the yard.  When that wears thin, Dean quizzes Sam on the Latin rite, interrupting him with various flying objects, trying to throw him off his place.

 

Sam’s known it by heart since he was twelve, though, and Dean can’t budge him, not even when he manages to wing Sam in the cheek with a chunk of loose concrete from the decaying back stoop.

 

Sam stumbles but doesn’t miss the word, finishes the last three lines, and then brings his hand up to the wound, pulling his fingers away to strain in the failing twilight to see if the dampness he feels is really blood.

 

Dean’s already beside him, pulling his hand away and staring up, standing too close to Sam suddenly.

 

“I’m okay, Dean,” he carps, taking a hasty step back and losing his balance on the weapons duffle at the edge of the driveway.

  
Dean clutches his arm, pulls him upright, and Sam overcorrects into Dean, who takes his weight with a swallowed “Oof!”  It had to hurt his ribs to catch Sam like that.

 

Dean doesn’t release him right away, doesn’t push him back with some comment about his clumsiness, doesn’t take the opportunity to tease him mercilessly about it.

 

Instead, he keeps ahold of Sam’s wrist just above his blood-stained fingers and stares hard into Sam’s face.

 

Sam’s sure that Dean’s looking at the damage, trying to make it out in the near-dark of the unlit back yard.  And then he’s not so sure anymore as he hears his brother’s breath hitch a little strangely, feels Dean release his wrist like it burned him to touch Sam, senses him pulling away even before he pivots on one foot and makes for the back door, barking over his shoulder, “Clean up the yard and get in here so I can take care of that.”

 

Mystified, Sam does as his brother says and comes in to find the kitchen illuminated by an extra lamp from the living room.  On the counter is their well-used first aid kit. 

 

This is old hat, this patching-up, and Sam sits for Dean’s fingers so close to his eye, doesn’t move when his brother dabs at the gash with a cotton ball soaked in alcohol, doesn’t even hiss as the first of two stitches pierce the delicate flesh of his cheek.

 

Dean ties off the sutures, snips away the extra thread, and puts a gloved hand to Sam’s chin, turning his face into the light.

 

“It shouldn’t scar much.”

 

Sam nods into Dean’s fingers, and Dean drops his chin and clears his throat, steps back to the sink to discard the gloves and clean up the kit.

 

“I’m sorry,” he says, back still to Sam, who’s just getting up from the chair, head a little woozy from the whiskey Dean had insisted he drink.

 

“Oh, hey, it’s okay.”  And it is.  Not the first time he’s gotten hurt during practice, and he’s sure it won’t be the last, either.  He’s had worse from a soccer match.

 

“No, I mean, about before, about the comics.  I didn’t mean—“

 

“It’s okay, Dean.”  And it is, too.  Sam’s had the day to think, to put himself in his brother’s place.  He can’t blame Dean for being freaked out.

 

“No, it’s not.  You’re my brother, Sam.  And that’s what matters.  We’re family.  Family counts.  Nothing else does.”

 

Sam nods, feeling a suspicious lump swelling his throat closed.  He clears it and says, “Thanks, Dean,” and sees his brother nod, back still to him.

 

That night, he has a dreamless sleep, disturbed only by the alarm clock radio blaring the Stones at top volume to announce the start of another school week.

 

Dean’s already up, which is weird—usually Sam has to shag him out of bed to drive him to school—and it takes Sam a minute to remember it’s his brother’s birthday.

 

“Happy birthday,” he offers, scrubbing a hand over his hair and yawning widely as he enters the kitchen.

 

“Yeah, thanks.  Finally legal,” he notes.  “’course, my ID says I’m twenty-three.”  Dean snorts a little, expressing the irony of it all, and hands Sam a cup of coffee.

 

“You want to do something special?”  Sam isn’t sure what he means.

 

“Like what, Sammy?  Ice cream at the soda fountain?  Night drive up to Make-Out Point?”

 

Sam rolls his eyes and suppresses the urge to smack his brother.  It’s too early in the morning for rough-housing.  Besides, Sam’s in bare feet, and he knows better than to scuffle with his brother when Dean’s got his boots on already.

 

“Get your ass in gear, princess, or you’ll be late for school.”

 

And that’s the last that’s mentioned of Dean’s birthday.

 

For a change, Sam gets to school early, and the hallways seems strange, lit by morning sun pouring in the high windows over the lockers on the outer wall, kids milling and laughing, telling lies about what they did over the weekend.

 

A wave of stranger sibilance follows Sam as he makes his way to his locker, whispers considering his own weekend activities, he figures.  But when he arrives, he realizes there’s another reason people are so interested in him.

 

Looped through the vent slots near the top of his locker is a wire.  Hanging from it is a rabbit’s foot, bone protruding, blood dried brown and sticky on its once-white fur.  Painted on the locker itself in red are the words, “Your out of luck.”

 

Sam doesn’t let his disgust at the display show by so much as a curled lip, but he does start to laugh, turning to the nearest group of kids eagerly awaiting his reaction to say, “He can’t spell,” like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever run across.

 

The kids take a collective half-step back, a receding wave of “watch-out-for-the-crazy-kid.”

 

Sam unhooks the wire, walks the foot over to the trash can, and pretends to toss it out.  His deft hands, skilled at so many larcenous things, pocket the object, however.  He’s seen too many curses to be stupid enough to throw out evidence of a possible hex.

 

He doesn’t think Bobby Munsy is smart enough to find “witchcraft” in a dictionary, much less practice it, but if he’s learned nothing else from his paranoid father it’s that you should never, ever make assumptions when it could mean your life on the line.

 

The red paint will have to wait until lunch, he guesses, wondering if Traymore has seen it, wondering what it will mean for him if the AP does.

 

Just as he’s closing his locker, book-bag over his shoulder, Steve approaches, eyes askance on the graffiti.

 

“Making friends?” he jokes, falling into step beside Sam and bumping him with a friendly shoulder.

 

Immediately, the tenor of the gossip around him changes, and Sam tries not to let it show on his face.

 

Steve’s one of the few people Sam knows who can keep pace with him, and it feels a little weird to have him at his side, where it’s usually only Eddy skulking meekly along.

 

Or Dean striding like he owns the world.

 

Sam puts that out of his mind.  That and the little shiver that runs down his back at the thought of Dean walking beside him down these halls.  In his head, he can imagine the picture they’d make, the Winchester brothers on the hunt for Munsy.

 

The kid would shit his pants.

 

Sam indulges in a private smirk, which Steve, who’s pretty perspicacious for an affected, spoiled stoner, catches.

  
“What’s funny?”

 

Sam shrugs like it’s nothing, really, and diverts his new friend.  “How was your weekend?”

 

The right question, Sam has found, prevents a lot of prying, and he spends the next five minutes listening to an improbable tale of…well…tail and woe, in which Steve narrowly missed being Swiss-cheesed by an angry father’s loaded bear gun.

 

Sam laughs at the appropriate places and finds himself relaxing a little, though he’s still alert to trouble.

 

Steve catches him off-guard by asking him what happened to his face, which is when Sam remembers the stitches.  He’s so used to being banged up that they’re easy to forget.

 

“Run-in with a low-hanging branch yesterday while cleaning up the yard,” he answers easily, having already decided with Dean on a suitable cover in case the school got curious.

 

Steve jokes about Sam’s clutziness and how chicks dig scars until Sam’s brought up short when he looks ahead to his homeroom to find Eddy waiting nearby, half-hidden by the water fountain a few lockers from the door.  Eli is two lockers beyond him, leaning against the wall.

  
“Oh, hey, I’ll catch you later, right?”

 

Steve says, “Detention,” like it’s a date, and sprints off, only sparing a second to say, sotto voce, “Freak alert,” and jerk his chin in Eddy’s direction.

 

“You shouldn’t hang out with him,” is the first thing out of Eddy’s mouth, which Sam finds a curious statement coming from the school pariah.  “He’s trouble,” Eddy adds.

 

Given that Steve began last week by calling Sam a fag, Sam can’t say he entirely disagrees with Eddy’s assessment.  Still, he wonders what particular abuse Steve has leveled at Eddy.  It had to be something special, given that Eddy is Green Bank’s front runner for the “Most Likely to End Up on Oprah” award.

Instead of voicing his feelings, Sam says only, “How was your weekend?”

 

But before Eddy can answer, the warning bell rings, and Eddy startles a little, like he had forgotten the time.

 

“I need to see you,” Eddy asserts, stuttering a little over the words.  “It’s important.  Meet me in the third floor bathroom during first.  9:05.”

 

Sam starts to protest that there’s no way Mr. Allebright is going to let him out of U.S. history, but Eddy’s already hurrying away.

 

Sighing, Sam spends homeroom pondering his options, and when he’s finished with his quiz on the Progressive Era during first period, he raises his hand, feigns a headache, and gets a pass to the nurse’s office.  He manages to avert Allebright’s efforts to have Sarah Edelman accompany him.

 

“I’ve got five minutes,” he’s already saying as he pushes into the room.  It’s predictably damp, smells vaguely of urinal cakes and missed shots, and he wrinkles his nose a little, peering under the stall doors until he sees two familiar pairs of scuffed-up sneakers.

 

No one else is there but them, and Eddy and Eli emerge, eerily pale in the terminal light scheme of most institutional restrooms.

 

“What is it?” He asks after a few awkward seconds of silence.

  
The lights buzz overhead.  One of them flickers, and Sam spares it a long glance, until he’s sure it’s just working on going out, nothing else.

 

Still, he keeps the corner of his eye on Eli.

 

“What happened to your face?” Eddy asks, like he’s just looked at Sam for the first time.

 

“Branch,” Sam says shortly.  “What did you want?”

 

“Munsy’s got it out for you,” Eddy offers. 

 

“Uh, yeah.  I noticed.”  Sam can’t help the sarcasm.  He did have dead animal on his locker, after all.

 

But Eddy is already shaking his head, Eli, too, a half-second behind the real boy in a shadow-like way that makes Sam shiver.

 

“No, there’s something else.”

 

Sam sharpens his look.  “How do you know?”

 

Eddy nods in the direction of his still-silent companion.  “Eli makes a good spy.”  He says it with real pride, and Sam has to bite back his immediate response.  _I’ll just bet he does._

 

“He says Munsy and his girlfriends are out for blood.  They’ve got something planned for you.  Like, they’re going to jump you some day after school.”

 

“Anything more specific than that?”  He doesn’t mean to sound nonchalant, but really, given how much time he spends with his life in legitimate danger, this all sounds a bit too playground-like for him.

 

“No.  Just that they’re going to get you away from your brother.”

 

Sam tightens his lips a little, not liking the reference to Dean.

 

“But Eli didn’t hear when they’re planning this attack?”  He continues the apparent protocol of pretending Eli isn’t there at all.

 

“No.  Just—“

 

Eddy’s reticence wears on Sam’s patience.  He already knows everything he ever wanted to about Teddy Roosevelt, but still…

 

“I’ve gotta get back to class, so—“

 

“Munsy said you’re a fag.  He thinks you’re fucking me.”

 

Sam blinks, trying to shake clear of the words “fag” and “fucking.”  Eddy doesn’t usually use profanity.

 

In fact, the geek seems rebelliously pleased with himself, and Sam gets it all of a sudden.

 

“Hey,” he says, more warmly than he’s yet spoken to the other boy today, “Thanks for letting me know.  I really appreciate you watching my back.”

 

Eddy swells, growing visibly taller as he stands up straight, Eli following behind in his odd mimicry, and Sam gives them a little smile and a wave as he leaves the room.

 

The day passes in its usual way, Sam pleased to discover that the kids who aren’t ignoring him altogether have, at least, stopped whispering about him loudly enough that he can make out words, and if it weren’t for the words still painted across his locker and the presence of Mr. Traymore there when he arrives at the end of the afternoon, Sam would count it a pretty good day, detention or not.

 

As it turns out, he spends detention being gently prodded by Traymore to reveal his opinion of the graffiti, his suspicions of who might have put it there, and his sense of how he fits in at Green Bank, all of which prods he deftly avoids with years of practice.

 

The poor man is deluded if he thinks Sam Winchester is going to cave under the pressure of authority.  He’s been grilled harder by better-meaning men than Traymore, that’s for sure.

 

Not entirely unexpectedly, Steve is waiting around the corner from Traymore’s office when Sam finally makes his escape.  It’s only four o’clock, and the boy takes an exaggerated look at his watch and jerks his head twice in the direction of the tech. room.

 

Sam shrugs and falls in with the other, and they end up repeating Friday’s post-detention routine.  Sam sipping his soda while Steve sucks on the joint, glasses discarded on the coffee table, eyes strangely vulnerable without them.

 

They’re sitting side by side on the couch, feet stretched out on the beat-up coffee table, a respectable distance between them, when Steve rolls his head sideways and spears Sam with a look.

 

“You ever get laid?”

 

Sam’s been a high school guy a long time, true enough, but he doesn’t get this question often, mostly because people don’t take the time to talk to him like this.  It feels strangely good, and he distrusts the feeling instantly.

 

Good things don’t happen to the Winchesters.  Not without a cost.

 

Still, he answers truthfully, wincing inwardly at how it must sound.  “Uh…no.”

 

“Dude.”  Steve draws it out into polysyllables, takes a toke, holds it in, releasing only thin ribbons of sweet smoke after a long interval of staring at Sam.

 

Sam’s sitting up straighter, Steve slumped in stoned-out splendor, so when the other boy reaches for Sam’s mouth, Sam thinks he’s just falling into Sam, uncoordinated.

 

He reaches up to catch the boy, and Steve misses the mark, skimming Sam’s jaw-line with his lips.

 

Sam shivers, can’t help it, and closes his fingers around Steve’s upper arms, not pushing away, but not inviting, either.

 

Up close, Sam can see the red veins in Steve’s eyes, smell the herb souring on the other’s tongue.  He takes a breath, intending to say something, though he’s not sure what, and Steve adjusts his trajectory and this time brushes Sam’s lips.

 

Given that this is the boy who less than a week ago called him a fudgepacker in the hallway, Sam has a right to be a little confused.  Even with his public speculation about Steve’s actual inclinations, Sam hadn’t been at all sure.

 

He’s good at reading his brother’s hand signals in the dead of night in a dark cemetery, of reading his father’s moods by the tilt of his chin and the length of time it takes him to blink through a thought, but for all that he’s a hunter honed by years of practice, Sam isn’t very good at reading human beings when it comes to the softer intentions.

 

He knows what it says about him, and he’s stuck in that momentary ignorance, wondering, when Steve draws back and says, “Fuck it, guess I was wrong.”

 

“No!” Sam says, because Steve isn’t wrong.  At least, he’s not wrong about Sam wanting it, liking it.

 

Sam himself isn’t sure what he wants, but he doesn’t want to miss the chance, either.

 

“I just—you surprised me.  I didn’t think you were—“

 

“I’m not!”  The denial is so quick, so sharp that Sam knows it’s been practiced, that Steve has prepared himself for every eventuality.

 

It makes Sam a little sad to consider the way the boy must have to hide.  Sam knows all about hiding things, knows how heavy it is to carry a secret, second life.

 

That’s probably why he leans down and claims Steve’s lips in another kiss, this one moving pretty quickly from safe to serious, Steve’s tongue darting out to lick at Sam’s lips until Sam opens his mouth with a breathless sound and lets the other boy in.

 

Soon enough, Sam’s reclined at an awkward angle against one arm of the couch and Steve’s pressing into him, diving into his mouth with sure, long strokes of his tongue until Sam is panting between explorations and thrusting his hips upward in tiny, involuntary motions.

 

Things might have gotten out of hand if Sam hadn’t thought of Dean and realized that his brother was probably waiting.

 

A cold wash of fear dampens his ardor as he imagines Dean stalking the halls in search of Sam, randomly opening the door to find his brother writhing beneath Dave Bellamy’s son.

 

He pulls his head back as far as the couch arm will allow, extricates his one free hand from Steve’s hair, and says, “I’ve gotta go.  My brother’s waiting.”

 

“Fuck your brother,” Steve mumbles hotly against Sam’s neck, following the suggestion with a nip that makes Sam have to stifle a groan.

 

There are several things Sam might say in response.  An ordinary brother might suggest his disgust at such a remark, for example.  Or he might protest that he’d rather fuck Steve.

  
But the former just isn’t true, a fact Sam chooses not to examine too closely just then.

 

And the second isn’t likely to get him out of the room more quickly.

 

“Steve,” he says a little more forcefully.  “Let me up.”

 

Steve obliges, though not without some noises about Sam being “such a girl,” and Sam stands up, smoothes down his shirt, runs a hand through his hair, and hopes his hard-on has subsided by the time he gets to the curb.

 

“See you tomorrow,” he offers lamely, unsure of what etiquette requires in this circumstance.  After all, the confession of virginity that had started all of this wasn’t an exaggeration.  He doesn’t have much experience.

 

“Later,” Steve says, glasses back on his face, hiding his eyes from Sam.  But he sounds happy, laid back and stoned, and by his posture, sprawled loose-limbed on the couch, erection rampant against his zippered fly, he seems okay with Sam’s leavetaking.

 

All the way to the car, Sam feels his lips buzzing and worries that Dean will be able to tell what he’s been doing.

 

“Lab good?”

 

“Uh, yeah,” he says.

 

Sam breathes a silent sigh of relief when Dean turns up the music and pulls away from the school without another question about his day.

 

He doesn’t mention the little gift left on his locker, just waits until Dean is snoring on the couch much later that night to sneak it out of his jacket pocket and examine it for any signs of supernatural tampering.  Once he’s satisfied that it’s just a cruel and ugly joke, nothing more, he wraps it in a couple of tissues and buries it in the bottom of the bathroom garbage, making a mental note to dump that into the larger kitchen trash can tomorrow.

 

Sam spends Tuesday’s classes thinking about post-detention time in the tech. room with Steve and class-change passages in the hallway wondering if he’ll see him. 

 

Realizing that he’s looking for the tall kid, Sam snorts and calls himself a girl in Dean’s voice, but just considering his brother’s reaction to Sam’s new-found…what?—boyfriend?  Not really.  Lover?  The word alone makes his stomach flip nervously.—whatever…considering Dean discovering that Sam’s hooking up with Steve Bellamy makes Sam a lot less happy, so he tries to put it out of his mind.

 

Detention is predictable, down to Steve’s grand entrance five minutes after the bell and Mrs. Jardin’s moue of disdain.

Post-detention doesn’t go as Sam imagined it might, however.  Steve makes the offer to come back to the tech. room as Sam expects, but once there, he more or less ignores Sam, chucking him a soda and lighting up his usual joint without a word.

 

Steve also makes a point of sitting on the sprung recliner that passes for the room’s only other seating besides the couch.

 

Sam drinks his soda compulsively, mentally scrabbling for anything to say that doesn’t sound lame or desperate.  He wonders if Steve’s already tired of him and then feels really pathetic for even thinking about it.

 

Finally, Steve breaks the tension by saying, “Look, I was pretty baked yesterday, and…”

 

“Oh, hey, no problem,” Sam immediately counters, and he’s pleased that none of the sinking sensation in his stomach makes its way into his voice.

 

“I’m not gay or anything,” Steve asserts.  “I was just stoned.”

 

Sam isn’t that experienced, it’s true, but he does pay attention in school, and he’s pretty sure he’d remember the health class where they learned that pot smoking can cause homosexuality.

 

Still, he lets it go, knowing that Steve has to deal with his secret his own way.  Besides, it’s not like Sam isn’t used to rejection.  And if he’s being entirely honest with himself—something he often avoids, since he can be pretty depressing—there’s a niggling worm of relief working its way through the morass of his belly and loosening his breathing just a little.

 

“No problem,” Sam asserts.

 

“But you’re gay?”

 

Steve isn’t as stoned as Sam wishes he were, obviously.

 

“Nah, man, I was just going with it, you know?”

 

Steve nods sagely, like this is wisdom eternal, and apparently accepts Sam at his word.

 

 _Denial ain’t just a river_ , Sam thinks, and finishes his soda.

 

“I should go,” he says a few quiet minutes later.  The air in the room is dense with unsaid things. 

 

Steve blows out a breath and offers a falsely hearty, “Hey, take it easy, man.”

 

“Yeah, you too,” he answers from the door.

 

He’s almost ridiculously grateful to see the Impala idling at the curb.

 

“Anything happen at school today?” Dean asks, too casually.  For a suspicious moment, Sam wonders what his brother could have heard.  Munsy hadn’t been around and Sam’s usual lunch with Eddy wasn’t even remarked on by the other kids.

 

“Sam?”  Dean’s voice is registering some concern when Sam finally shakes himself free of his worry.

  
“No, nothing, Dean.  School was…school.”

 

“Okay.”  Dean says it like his little brother might be crazy, but there’s no hint in his voice that he thinks Sam is lying, and that gives Sam some relief.

 

“Pizza okay?”

 

It’s Tuesday, which isn’t traditionally a night for eating out. 

 

“Late birthday celebration?”

 

Dean makes a dismissive sound.  “Don’t feel like cooking.”

 

“Okay,” Sam says, but he doesn’t entirely buy his brother’s reasons.

 

When they get to the pizza parlor, Sam has a dizzying moment of panic.  Dave Bellamy is in the kitchen, apparently managing the help.  He can see the tall man through the window behind the service counter.

 

Sam swallows and tries to think of some way that he can get Dean to go elsewhere.

 

“Uh, you know what?  I’m not really in the mood for pizza, so—“

 

“Eat or don’t, Sam.  I’m staying.”

 

Dean gives him a significant look, and Sam realizes that Dean knew.  He knew who managed the pizza place!

 

 _Of course he did.  He’s Dean_ , Sam reminds himself, his internal voice in full-on “DUH!” mode.

 

“Dean,” Sam warns quietly and through clenched teeth.

 

“Don’t be a pussy,” Dean responds, voice equally quiet and just as intense.

 

Sam blows out a resigned, pissy sigh and picks a booth as far from the front as possible.

 

When they’re halfway through their pizza—which Sam hates to admit is really good—Dave Bellamy makes a manager’s sweep of the restaurant, stopping at the few populated tables to ask how things are.

 

He isn’t remiss in visiting theirs, and Sam slaps on a fake smile and tries really hard not to think of having his tongue down the man’s son’s throat.

 

The blush burns its way up his face.

 

Bellamy asks the rote questions, Dean answers, an edge to his voice that’s unmistakable.  Sam can’t even look at the man.

 

When the manager leaves, the air several degrees colder than it was when he’d arrived, Dean kicks Sam under the table hard enough that the blow vibrates up his leg.

“Ow!” he says, louder than he should.

 

“What the hell is wrong with you?”  Dean asks, voice low and hard.  “You act like a fucking pussy, like you’ve got something to be ashamed of.  Christ, Sam, you’re a Winchester.  Would it kill you to remember that?”

 

Sam’s immediate reaction is anger, but it’s quickly tempered with despair.  There’s no way he can explain to Dean why he’s so uncomfortable around the elder Bellamy.  Dean wouldn’t get it.  He just wouldn’t.

 

“I just don’t like the guy, okay?”

 

“And you think blushing like a virgin and refusing to look at the man is the way to tell him that?”

Sam shakes his head, unable to come up with a suitable rejoinder.  Dean’s right.  _Damn it._

 

The rest of the meal is passed in a stilted silence broken only by Dean’s distracted flirtation with the waitress, which he does almost by instinct. 

 

When she scribbles her number on the take-home box, Sam just rolls his eyes.

 

Once home, he does his calc and chem. homework, does the usual push-ups and sit-ups required of their life, showers, and hits the hay, glad to be done with having to try to hide things from Dean.

 

His dreams are full of fragmented images, faces from his past and voices he can’t place, and he wakes up feeling ill at ease, like he’s forgotten something he was supposed to remember.

 

Eddy is waiting for Sam again outside of homeroom, but this time Sam’s earlier and alone, Steve having apparently taken to heart the old warning about discretion and valor. 

 

“Can we talk to you a minute?”

 

Sam’s tempted to tease Eddy that he’s not sure Eli really _can_ talk, given the “boy’s” continued reticence, but when he sees the circles under Eddy’s eyes and the lines around his mouth, he decides against it.

  
“Sure,” he says.

 

“I know a place,” the pale boy adds, turning to move away.  Eli glides behind him, an echo of every movement, and Sam falls in to one side, not quite even with Eli. 

 

Eddy leads them to the third floor science wing, where there aren’t any lockers.  The labs and classrooms here aren’t used for homerooms, and except for a few lovebirds and the occasional teacher, it’s pretty empty.  They stop outside a door marked “Storage.  School Personnel Only,” and Eddy, after darting nervous glances to either side, pulls a key from his pocket and unlocks the door.

 

Once inside with the door closed behind them, Eddy turns on a dim, forty-watt light bulb that Sam can now see dangling from the ceiling of a narrow room, perhaps four feet by twelve.  There’s a sharp smell in the air, strong chemicals, and a stained stationary sink in one corner.

  
“This is where they keep the chemicals for lab,” Eddy notes, though Sam had already figured it out.  He eyes the stock with practiced consideration, taking a casual inventory of all the things he and Dean and their dad could use on the job.  He might have to swing through here before they leave Green Bank for good.

 

“How’d you score a key?” Sam asks, like he’s curious and thinks it’s cool, because he does.

 

Eddy shrugs noncommittally.  “Eli gets stuff.”

 

This sends a narrow ribbon of cold down Sam’s chest and into his belly, and he looks at Eli, who is looking right back at—or rather, right through—Sam.

 

The ribbon widens to a dense rope of worry, like a noose around his gut.

 

“I think you’re in a lot of danger,” Eddy says without preliminary.  “Eli’s heard more about Munsy and his guys planning to jump you.  It sounds serious.”

 

It’s occurred to Sam that maybe Eddy is making this whole thing up.  After all, the kid doesn’t have any other friends.  Maybe he wants Sam’s full attention.  Since Eli is still an unknown quantity—Sam promises himself a trip to the library after detention, if he can get Dean to drop him off there and agree to pick him up later—it’s possible the creature is creating mischief where there isn’t any.

 

Still, Sam can’t afford to be too suspicious, and Eddy’s eyes are avid on Sam’s own, watching for his reaction.

 

“What’s he heard?” Sam says, not even bothering to acknowledge the strange third to their party, knowing Eli won’t answer directly anyway.

 

“Eli says that Munsy and the guys are planning to lure you away from school on Friday, get you alone somewhere where your brother can’t find you, and then jump you.”

 

“Does Eli have any idea how they plan to get me away from the school?”

 

Eddy looks at Eli, and Sam follows suit.  They both watch as the other shrugs and wobbles his head in a shaky negative motion.

 

“Eli said he can try to stop them, though.”

 

This makes Sam’s eyebrows go up, and he can’t quite hide the surprised look on his face.

  
Eddy grins a little gloatingly, his eyes alight with something close to malice.  “He can do stuff, too, you know?”

 

“Stuff?”

 

Eddy gives a one-shouldered shrug.  “You know, like if I asked him to, he could cause an accident or something.  I could have him drive Munsy and his goons off the road tomorrow morning.”

 

Sam’s eyes haven’t left Eli’s face, but he’s getting nothing to go on there.  The other’s eyes are blank, his expression completely neutral.  If he feels anything about being used in such a way by Eddy, he’s not letting on.

 

“Has Eli ‘done stuff’ for you before?”

 

Eddy shakes his head.  “Nope.  I just found out he could!”

 

Worry tightens its grip on Sam’s belly, and he swallows hard to settle his stomach.

 

“What do you mean?”  He tries to sound casual, like he’s merely curious.  “What did Eli do?”

 

“Oh, nothing much.  He just took care of a problem we were having with the mail.  Sometimes this kid down the block would steal it or take it out and throw it in a puddle.  Once, he bashed our mailbox with a bat.”

 

Dread grips Sam’s throat, and he tries to clear it before asking, “What did Eli do to this kid?”

 

“Scared him is all,” Eddy says.

 

“How?”

 

A sly look crosses Eddy’s manic face, and Sam has to hold back a shiver.

 

It’s suddenly occurred to Sam that he has screwed up.  He’s really, really screwed up.  He mistook Eli for the real threat, and while it’s true that supernatural creatures don’t generally hang around for kicks and giggles, it’s not the creature who’s the real danger, Sam suddenly realizes.

 

Eddy’s eyes have the same righteous glaze of the gun-toting whack-job on the school roof or the sniper in the clock-tower as he and his “friend” exchange a secretive look.

 

Too many years of bullying have finally gotten to Eddy.  Or maybe Sam’s friendship was itself the catalyst.  Either way, the bullied has been emboldened, and he’s out to seek some revenge.

 

Sam’s going to have to disarm the kid of his only real weapon—that is, if he can figure out what Eli is to begin with, never mind how to get rid of him. 

 

And he’s going to have to skip detention.

 

Sam kind of hates that idea, knows it means more trouble for him, knows, too, that a little part of him was kind of looking forward to seeing Steve again, even if things between them are strained.

 

_Oh, well.  Duty calls._

 

“So do you want Eli to help you out, or what?”

 

Eddy’s got that strange light in his eyes fixed on Sam’s own, and he’s nodding a little mechanically, as if urging Sam to say yes.

 

Sam shakes his head and says, “No, no.  That’s okay.  I can handle Munsy.  Don’t even worry about it.  It’s probably just a rumor anyway.”

 

He doesn’t quite believe that, himself, but he needs to diffuse Eddy’s newfound enthusiasm for mayhem.

 

“Okay.”  Eddy sounds disappointed.  Eli doesn’t sound like anything, standing perfectly still and splitting his looks between his friend and Sam, like it’s some kind of slow-motion tennis match.

 

“But thanks for asking,” he adds.  “See you at lunch?”

 

“Yeah.”  Eddy’s voice is subdued, and he won’t look at Sam. 

 

Sam cracks the door to make sure no one’s looking their way before making a quick exit.  As he jogs in the direction of his homeroom, Sam feels a mounting urgency in him to get to the bottom of the Eli mystery.  Eddy’s crossed a mental line, Sam knows, and he might be the only one who can avert a disaster in the making.

 

The day passes with predictable slowness.  Sam wonders, not for the first time, how teachers expect him to pay attention when things a lot more important and immediate than the First World War and atomic bonding are happening.

 

He supposes it’s because teachers, like the rest of the regular, workaday world, haven’t got the remotest clue about the world that they actually live in.  The world Sam sees. 

 

If they tested him on the stamina of werewolves or the likeliest nights on which to find a woman in white in rural Alabama, he’d be valedictorian inside a week.

 

Sam gets out of last period a little early, pleading an appointment.  He wants to avoid any hassle at his locker and any chance of running into Traymore.

 

He’s got an hour and a half before Dean’s supposed to pick him up.  He guesses he should call him, but their cell phones have been out of service since they got to Green Bank—either they’re really on the ass end of nowhere, or the credit card they’re charged to is maxed.  With Dad out of town, there’s no way to know, and Dean doesn’t want risk tipping off the phone company by calling.

 

Thankfully, there are still plenty of payphones.

 

“Hey, Dean.  Yeah, I have to go to the library after school today instead of the lab.  Can you pick me up at 6:00 there?”

 

Dean offers the expected response—part teasing about Sam’s geekiness, part bitching about having to be Sam’s chauffeur, but he agrees in the end.

 

Armed with a different theory about Eli’s origins, Sam asks the librarian—the same lady who’d helped him the last time, he’s pleased to see—about town newspapers.

 

She leads him to a dimly lit back room that might have been part of the vestry, in which there’s a small table and plastic chair squeezed in between floor-to-ceiling metal shelves full of marked banker’s boxes.

 

“They’re in order of year, most recent on the bottom shelf, less recent on the next, and so on.  The earliest, from the town’s founding in 1856, are on the top.  There’s a step stool, but I don’t suppose you’ll need it.”

 

Working on the theory that Eli’s some sort of spirit manifestation, and going with a gut instinct that he isn’t an “old-fashioned” ghost—that is, that he’d died sometime in the last couple of decades—Sam starts working his way back through the papers, cursing the small town libraries and their penchant for keeping hard copies instead of putting things on the computer.

 

The _Green Bank Gazette_ is a weekly paper, which offers Sam some glimmer of hope that he’ll get through his task in the time he has, but it’s still slow going.  He’s made it to the late eighties when he finds it while skimming the obits, a task he’s so familiar with, he can scan an entire page in under a minute and a half—Dad’s timed them.

 

 _Bancowicz, Elijah H.  Died suddenly at home on 3 March at the age of fifteen.  He is survived by a mother, Marcia.  Memorial service to be held at Eckert and Banks.  7:00pm tonight. Flowers gratefully declined._  

 

Sam goes back through the last month’s papers more carefully, searching for any mention of the boy.  He does the same for the next month, finding nothing at all to indicate how the boy died.

  
He knows from ample experience that “died suddenly at home” is news-speak for suicide, which fits with Eli’s lingering presence.

 

What he can’t figure out is how Eli can manifest physically, at least to steal things like the storage room key.  Obviously, the spirit is otherwise incorporeal, since he’s invisible to everyone by Eddy.

 

And Sam himself.

 

He purposely avoids thinking too hard about why he, Sam, can see the kid, chalking it up instead to the general weirdness of his life, and moves on through a mental checklist of things he knows about spirits.

 

Further investigation (he checks the phonebook that the librarian—Ms. McCloskey, he discovers—keeps behind the counter) turns up one M. Bancowicz, who lives three blocks from the library.

 

Sam thanks Ms. McCloskey for her help and hurries out of the library into the deep blue twilight.  It’s five o’clock.  He can make it to the Bancowicz house, interview Eli’s mother, and get back to the library before Dean arrives, as long as he’s quick.

 

Marcia Bancowicz answers the door in a pair of baggy grey sweatpants, loose grey tee-shirt, and faded man’s blue flannel shirt, sleeves rolled up to her elbows, revealing liver-spotted, sinewy forearms and hands cramped with arthritis.

 

Between two knobby joints, she holds a burning cigarette. 

 

The house smells of burnt cabbage and cat litter.

  
Three felines slink under the couch as she leads him into a dim living room, yellowed walls once white, he thinks, brown leather couch spewing stuffing at every corner, where cats’ claws have done their work.

 

“You say you’re on the yearbook up to the high school?”

 

She has a Minnesota accent, long on vowels, and squinches her eyes up tight like she should be wearing glasses to see clearly.

 

“Yes, Mrs. Bancowicz.  We’re interested in putting together some memorial pages for this year’s edition.  In going back through past years, we found the students who had passed away, and we were hoping to do a little article on each of them with their picture.”

 

She snorts inelegantly and then wipes her cigarette finger across her nose, narrowly missing setting a stringy gray lock on fire in the process.  Her hair lies in desultory strands across her face.  It’s far too long for a woman her age, but then, Sam reflects, she doesn’t seem to care about appearances.

 

“You lot picked a fine time to care about my boy.  Ten years too late.”

 

She’s looking away from Sam, towards a fake mantle nailed over an obviously unused gas fireplace.  On the mantle, amidst crumpled cigarette boxes and the detritus of a desperate life, he sees a dusty framed photograph, too hard to make out in the dim light of the depressing room.

 

“Is that a picture of Elijah?”

 

“Eli,” she says shortly.  “He liked to be called Eli.  Said Elijah was too bible-like.  Named him after my grand-dad.  He was old country.”

 

Sam nods.  “May I?”

 

A glowing red pointer jabbing at the mantle is the only invitation he gets.

 

Sam holds the photo up to what light there is and sees immediately that he has the right house. 

 

Eli is smiling, a nervous, uncertain smile.  He’s wearing a checked button-down shirt, buttoned all the way up, and thick-framed glasses.  His dark hair is plastered down on his head.

 

“When was this taken?” Sam asks.

 

“That’s his last school picture,” the woman answers.  Something in her voice shifts, and Sam puts the frame down and returns to his seat.

 

“What happened to Eli, Mrs. Bancowicz?”

 

“You don’t know?”

 

Whatever sorrow he’d thought he’d heard is replaced by sharpness, like the point of a dagger hidden in a sofa cushion.  He senses there’s a killing anger hidden just below the surface.

 

He shakes his head.  “I’ve heard rumors, but—“

 

Her bark of laughter startles him.  It’s humorless and hyena-like. 

 

“Sure you have.  That’s all those lousy bastards are good for up to that school.  Even the teachers talk.  Jip-jip-jip, that’s all they do.”  She makes a motion with the fingers of her free hand, like a shadow-puppet mouth opening and closing rapidly.

 

“It’s rumors that killed Eli, all of them talking about him being ‘unnatural.’  ‘Unnatural!’  He was as much a boy as any of ‘em, but did they give him a chance?  No, just because his lousy father couldn’t keep his hands off the kids in youth choir…”

 

She seems to remember that she has an audience then and checks herself, folding her shoulders in and sinking back into the chair.

 

“He wasn’t his father’s son in that regard,” she says more quietly, not looking now at Sam but at the picture on the mantle.  “He was a good boy.  He was all I had.”

 

“I’m very sorry, Mrs. Bancowicz.  Is there anything you want me to put in the article about Eli?”  He hates himself a lot at the expression that crosses her face, a sort of minor triumph, like he’s offering her a chance at the redemption her son never got.

 

She tells him about Eli’s love of reading and how he wrote stories.  For ten agonizing minutes, she searches through the hutch drawers for some of his English assignments that she’d kept and then shows them to Sam, who makes the appropriate noises of approval over the boy’s cramped, handwritten tales.

 

It takes him fifteen minutes to extricate himself from her attention, to make it to the bottom of the porch stairs—the woman still talking after him, talking about her dead son—and when he makes it to the corner of her street, he realizes he’s late for meeting Dean.

 

Dean is out of the car and leaning against the side panel, staring at the doors of the now-closed library like he can blow them off their hinges if he only concentrates.

 

Sam is a little winded from his three-block sprint, but he catches his breath within three words—“I’m so sorry.”

 

“Save it,” Dean says, voice deceptively quiet. 

 

Sam knows that voice means that Dean is in a dangerous mood, and he sinks into his seat without another word, head bowed, staring hard at the tops of his boots.

 

“Where were you, Sam?  And don’t you lie to me, little brother.”

 

Sam takes in a quick breath.

 

“I was talking to a woman about her son.  It’s for an assignment for English class.  We’re supposed to get information about kids who’ve died from Green Bank.  The best memorials go in the yearbook.  It was only three blocks from here.  I didn’t think you’d mind.”

 

He’s had a three-block sprint to think up an excuse.  No one can say Sam’s not quick.

 

Out of the corner of his eye, Sam sees Dean’s hands clench and open, clench and open, on the steering wheel.

 

When his brother’s jaw tenses and then relaxes and he checks over his shoulder for oncoming traffic, pulling out, Sam knows he’s okay, he’s in the clear.

 

“Don’t do that again.”

 

Sam nods and adds an, “I won’t,” for good measure.  He keeps his sigh of relief to himself.

 

Dean acts a little odd when they get home.  Sam catches his brother giving him longer-than-usual looks, like something about Sam is different and Dean can’t quite figure it out.

 

Ordinarily, Sam would call his brother out on this behavior, but he figures he’s caused Dean enough grief.  And besides, being the object of Dean’s special interest makes him feel warm in ways he probably won’t ever admit.

 

Over dinner, the conversation turns to hunts they’ve had, and Sam finds an opening to quiz Dean about spirits and ghosts, though he has to tread carefully to keep Dean from getting suspicious.  Their banter is so comfortable, so familiar that Sam feels an ache in the region of his heart when he remembers how much he’s keeping from Dean.

 

He wishes he could just tell Dean the whole sorry tale, starting with Eddy and Eli and ending with Steve in the tech room, leaving out nothing but maybe the way Sam feels sometimes when Dean looks at him with a full-on smile, like he’s doing right now.

 

_It’s bad enough I’m a freak.  I don’t need to be the kind of freak even Dean won’t love._

 

But he can’t.  He can’t risk what Dean might do.  To Eli or to Steve.  Dean’s got a way of going full-force into every situation, making big holes where little ones might be more efficient.  Sam doesn’t want to imagine what his brother might do to a kid like Eddy, who’s already experienced more than his fair share of hard knocks.

 

No, it’s got to be Sam who takes care of Eli.  If he can even figure out a way to get rid of the spirit.

 

Mrs. Bancowicz had indicated that Eli was cremated.  Sam hadn’t been able to work it into conversation how the boy had offed himself, but he imagines the scene must have been cleaned up, so there shouldn’t be any trace left in the house.

 

He guesses that there could be a lock of hair or something, but…

 

He shakes out of his contemplation to see Dean giving him a searching look.

 

“Do I have sauce on my chin?”

 

“Dude, you were, like, a million miles away.  Something up with you?”

 

Sam shakes his head.  “No.  I was just…thinking about my English test on Friday.”

 

Dean snorts.  “Man, sometimes I wonder if you’re really my brother.”

 

The rest of the meal and the evening pass in the usual way, Sam doing homework, Dean watching television. 

 

He comes into the living room at eleven to tell Dean he’s going to bed and finds his brother on the floor between the couch and the tv, working his way gingerly through Marine-style push-ups.

 

“Are you sure you should be doing that?”

 

Dean’s forearms are shaking, and Sam can see the way his brother’s teeth are gritted against the pain.

  
“Shut up, Sam.”  Dean’s voice is tight through clenched teeth.

 

“G’night,” he replies, turning tail. 

 

His sleep that night is interrupted only once, by Dean, who groans in his sleep loud enough to wake Sam.

 

“Dean,” he whispers across the narrow gap between their beds. 

 

“Wha?”

 

“You’re…groaning.”

 

“’kay.”

 

If Dean resumes the noise later on, Sam doesn’t hear it.

 

Thursday morning finds Sam back in the third floor storage closet with Eddy, whose eyes are eager with untold gossip.

  
Sam listens to the same things he’s already heard and tries not to express his impatience that Eddy is wasting his time like this.  Sam had seen Steve lingering in a recessed doorway a few classrooms down from Sam’s locker, but he’d only just caught the other boy’s significant look when Eddy had approached him, clutched his forearm, and urged Sam to follow him.

 

Eli is standing behind Eddy in the usual place, and Sam’s got his eyes on the shadow boy, so he misses when the tenor of Eddy’s voice changes, when his eyes shift in their expression, until he’s brought back to the live boy’s look by the words

 

“…ja go to Eli’s house last night?”

 

“What?”  Sam asks, stalling.

 

“You were at Mrs. Bancowicz’s last night.  Eli doesn’t like that.”

 

Sam spares a glance for the spirit, whose face is blank of expression.  He doesn’t seem particularly upset.

 

“I’m doing a paper for English class.  Extra credit,” Sam adds hurriedly, remembering that the lie that works on his brother won’t work on a kid in his own grade.

 

“Uh-uh.  You were snooping for information on Eli.”

 

“So?”  Sam shifts to the offense, having learned from the best how to deflect when a conversation goes off the tracks.  “What if I was?  Maybe I’m interested.  What difference does it make?”

 

“You know.”

 

Eddy’s voice is hard, deep, utterly different from his usual tone, and Sam drags his eyes away from the spirit, who’s got a strange little smile tugging at the corners of his bloodless lips.

 

“You know what Eli is.”

 

To say Sam is startled by this sudden upending of what he understood to be true is to indulge in serious understatement, but of the many lessons he’s learned in the Winchester School of Hard Knocks, the rolling with the punches one is probably his best mastered.

 

“Yeah.”  Sam manages to make it sound like talking about spirit manifestations is second nature, nothing new, ho-hum.  Of course, it is, but Eddy has no way of knowing that, and Sam’s nonchalance does seem to throw him off.

 

For all that Eddy has blossomed in the last few days, he’s still the uncertain underdog of every high school prank.

 

“Really?”  Eddy’s voice cracks with more characteristic suspicion.  He thinks Sam is having a laugh at his expense.

 

“He’s a spirit,” Sam says with confidence.  “He’s haunting you because you were picked on like he was, and he felt sorry for you.  You’re kindred spirits.  Except, uh, you’re not.  A spirit, I mean.”

 

Eddy’s quiet, and Sam can see him working through his possible responses. 

 

He settles on panic, Sam sees, at about the same time Eddy shoves him into the shelving.  Plastic bottles of powdered chemicals rock and teeter.  A couple fall to the floor with a flat whumping sound, and Sam wonders if people in the hall are close enough to hear.

 

He didn’t expect the violence from Eddy, but it’s okay.  He stays against the shelves and brings his hands up, hisses, “What the hell?” and lets his eyes show a little anger.

 

“I’m—I’m sorry,” Eddy stutters, stepping back like the three feet between them is enough to keep him from harm.

 

“I didn’t mean—“

 

“Don’t worry about it,” Sam assures him, raising both hands, palms up, in a universal sign of appeasement. 

 

“It’s—you can’t—Eli’s my _friend_.”

 

Sam’s eyes flicker to take in the spirit, who is looking at Sam with the strongest expression Sam’s yet seen on the spirit’s face.  He’s trying to make it out—is it longing?  Hope? 

 

Eddy makes a frustrated sound, and Sam has to force his attention back to the boy.

 

“I understand that you like Eli, Eddy.  But Eli’s a spirit.  He doesn’t belong here.  He—“

 

“He’s my _friend_.”  Eddy’s voice has risen to a desperate wail, like the words, repeated in just the right intonation, will keep Eli and Eddy safe from change.

 

“Eddy—“ Sam starts, but he doesn’t get to finish.  At the same time that the smaller boy flings himself at Sam, hands flailing, apparently intending to hurt Sam, the door to the storage closet is flung wide, and Sam catches a glimpse of a startled chem. teacher’s face and the faces of several curious students before he’s trying to keep Eddy from hurting himself or Sam.

 

Soon enough, Eddy’s been dragged into the hall, Eli ghosting after him in silence, and Sam has a minute to catch his breath and straighten his shirt before he, too, is being beckoned to exit the closet.

 

“How’d you get in there?”  One teacher is asking in the perennial note of accusation that all teachers apparently learn at teacher school.

 

“What’s going on?” 

 

Sam groans inwardly at the familiar voice of Traymore.

 

“Winchester,” Traymore says, his voice managing to convey both disappointment and resignation, like Sam has fulfilled his worst expectations, and that’s a state the man is used to.

 

“My office.  Now.”

 

Sighing, Sam moves toward the far stairs, passing through a gauntlet of whispers and a few less quiet suggestions about what, exactly, he was doing in the storage closet with “Eddy the freak.”

 

Just before he gets to the stairs, he hears, “Winchester,” and looks up to find Steve standing there, his eyes, as usual, masked, but his jaw-line tense, lips thin. 

 

Sam nods at Steve, gives him a cocky half-smile.  “Don’t believe everything you hear,” he says over his shoulder as he starts down the stairs.  Inside, his heart is shriveling, and Sam is trying to hold it together, trying to resist the urge to bolt for the front door and run all the way home.

 

Dean could probably figure out a way to fix all of this, but it’s Sam’s mess.  He made it, and he’s got to be the one to clean it up.

 

Besides, he’s not sure how he’d explain all the lying he’s been doing, and the last thing he needs is for Dean to hate him, too.

 

Traymore keeps him through all of first and half of second period, only lets him go after extracting a promise Sam has no intentions of keeping—“Yeah, I’ll talk to the counselor on Monday”—and accepting with no protest the extra week of detention—“Plus a day for what you skipped yesterday.”

 

Far worse than Traymore’s clumsy do-gooding and bad interrogation methods are the indecent noises that follow Sam down the hallway during every class change.

 

They get worse during lunch, which he eats alone, Eddy and Eli nowhere to be found. 

 

Munsy, who doesn’t usually share Sam’s lunch period, makes an appearance at his table to “accidentally” kick his chair and stage-whisper, “Fucking faggot,” in Sam’s ear, onion breath making him drop what’s left of his sandwich.

 

The big boy is up against Sam’s chair.  He can feel Munsy’s body heat leeching through his shirt, and he wants to rise up out of his seat, force the kid back and away, anything but sit in the shadow of his influence and listen to the poison spilling from his greasy lips.

 

Instead, though, Sam fixes his eyes on an indefinite spot on a column halfway across the room, looking over the heads of all the curious people, all the sneering ones, the few sympathetic students who hide their fear by whispering to the people around them.

 

Munsy continues his tirade, voice just loud enough to be clear in a one-table radius all around but not audible to the lunch monitors at each corner and by the doors.

 

Sam’s able to tune out the worst of the words, able to focus on his breathing and heart-rate, putting his training to a use his father could never have anticipated, pretending that he’s somewhere else, sitting patient in the dark, waiting for a more obvious monster.

 

That he finds in his other life an escape from the ordinary is an irony too bitter for Sam, and when he can take no more, he does stand, forcing the other back.

 

Munsy shoves the chair into the back of Sam’s legs, but Sam had expected it, sidesteps swiftly and spins to face the boy.

 

The cafeteria falls unnaturally silent.

 

On his peripheral, Sam sees the lunch monitors moving in, and he drops his hands as though he’s not going to fight, making his posture as innocuous as possible even as his eyes take on the flat, empty stare he wears when he’s about to kill something evil and ugly.

 

He can feel an unpleasant smile carving lines in his face, can see in Munsy’s eyes some unnamed recognition of Sam’s threat, the other boy’s lizard brain warning him even as he continues to say things, softer now as the adults approach but no less awful for being said in an intimate voice.

 

Sam says nothing still, just lets his face express his true intentions, and when the monitors finally arrive, time having attenuated like in a slow-motion movie scene, Sam’s face has slid into impassivity and Munsy has fallen silent.

 

“Problem?” One of the female teachers asks.

 

Sam shakes his head.  “No,” he says, gathering his lunch bag, balling it up, tossing it in a perfect arc at the nearest receptacle.

 

Munsy just snorts and raises his hand to make a “shooting” gesture at Sam, exaggerated wink making his intentions clear.

 

The rest of the day is better, if only because Sam doesn’t see Munsy again.  He’s grateful it’s not a gym day.

 

He half expects the kid to be lurking at his locker, but the big boy and his cohort are nowhere to be found, and Sam makes it to detention without incident.

 

Surprisingly, though Sam’s a few minutes early, Steve is already there, having apparently foregone his usual dramatic entrance in favor of shooting Sam a nod and mouthing the words “Wait for me,” to which Sam gives his own nod.

 

Detention takes the usual eternity, but Sam is rewarded for his patient waiting when he exits the room to find Steve waiting just down the way and around the corner, out of sight of the other rejects who spend their afternoons in detention.

 

Obviously, the other boy doesn’t want to be seen with Sam, which hurts his feelings some, but he tries to shrug it off, put himself in the other boy’s shoes.  Steve has to stay in Green Bank, after all.  And he’s got Dave for a father, so it can’t be easy.

 

They enter the tech room as usual, but unlike the other times, Steve doesn’t offer him a soda or break out a joint for himself.  Instead, he sinks onto the sofa and indicates with a pat of his hand that Sam should join him there.

 

Sam does, leaving a reasonable space between them, and Steve snorts.

 

“Little late for modesty, don’t you think?”

 

Sam gives him a sharp look.  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

 

Steve shrugs and doesn’t look at Sam as he adds, “You and Eddy made it pretty clear this morning.”

 

Sam twists around, puts a knee up on the couch so that he’s facing Steve’s profile.  The other boy still won’t turn his head or take Sam in.

 

“I told you not to believe what you hear.  We weren’t doing anything.”

 

“Riiiight.”

 

Exasperated and exhausted by the day’s general crappiness, Sam snaps, “You really think I’d make out with that freak?”

 

He regrets his word choice almost at once.  He’s not usually the one to call names, having been on the receiving end of them so often.

 

But it gets Steve looking at him, anyway.  “You weren’t making out with Eddy in the chem. closet?”

 

“No,” Sam says firmly, giving Steve the full force of his gaze.

 

“Okay,” Steve says softly, and there’s something of relief in his voice.  He drops his glasses onto the table, then, sits up and turns to face Sam, mirroring him with his opposite knee on the cushion between them.

 

Sam’s not expecting Steve to reach out and cup the back of his head, to pull him in for a searing, wet kiss that leaves him breathless and almost immediately hard.

 

Maybe because he wasn’t prepared for it, he doesn’t know what to do about it except go with it, and soon enough he’s pressing Steve back into the couch, throwing a leg over his thighs and kissing him with serious intent, tongue thrusting into the other boy’s mouth, hands almost bruising on his shoulders, jean-clad pelvis grinding down on Steve’s own obvious arousal.

 

Steve’s got his hands up under Sam’s shirt and tee-shirt, is running his nails along the line of Sam’s ribs, and Sam is just sliding his own hands down to the hem of Steve’s Marley tee-shirt when Steve makes a startled noise and bucks under Sam.

 

Assuming that the other boy is merely eager to be undressed, Sam keeps going.

 

Only when Steve wrenches his mouth free a scant hair’s breadth to say, “Sam,” in a fearful voice does Sam realize that someone else is in the room.

 

His back is to the door, and the time it takes him to swivel his head around feels a lot longer than it probably is.

 

Besides, he already knows what to expect, has a sense of him without having to look, so his lips are already saying, “Dean,” in a pleading voice before he sees his big brother standing there, one hand on the door handle, the other clenched in a fist against his thigh, face paler than usual and eyes telegraphing betrayal.

 

“Dean,” he says again, but Dean cuts him off.

 

“Get to the car, Sam.”

 

“Dean—“ he tries again.

 

“Get. to. the. car.”

 

“Dean, no.”

 

“Sam.”  Dean’s voice suggests he’s on the very razor’s edge of his control.  But—

 

“I’m not leaving you here alone with Steve.”

 

Sam didn’t think his brother could look more hurt, but it’s there, a momentary flash of something cutting his brother deep, and then Dean’s face is implacable again.

 

“Get up,” Dean says, and this time he’s addressing the boy who has been all this time stock still beneath Sam, like silence and stillness will keep him from being eaten by the predator that’s got him in its sights.

 

Sam shifts off of Steve and stands, straightening his shirts and not looking at Dean.  Steve pulls his tee-shirt straight and stands, too, shifting his weight from foot to foot uncertainly, glancing toward his discarded glasses, obviously unsure if reaching for them will set Dean off.

  
“Go,” Dean says, stepping aside just enough to leave room for the other boy to go. 

 

Still, Steve hesitates.

 

“Go,” Dean repeats, brooking no argument, and Steve does, abandoning his shades and stuttering a little in his step as he has to pass so close to the elder Winchester.

 

Dean’s free hand darts out and catches Steve at the joint of his near elbow, and the boy lets out a little involuntary sound.

 

“You tell anyone about this and it’ll be the last thing that tongue of yours ever does.  Got it?”

 

Steve nods convulsively, swallowing hard like he might be sick.

 

Dean releases him with a tight nod, and Sam hears Steve’s running feet receding as Dean turns to give Sam the full weight of his regard.

 

“It’s not what it looks like,” Sam says, trying to forestall the explosion.

 

“It looked like you were tongue-fucking Dave Bellamy’s kid,” Dean observes, and his tone is too regular, his voice far too steady.

 

Sam winces at his brother’s word-choice, but it’s not like he can really afford to act delicate.

 

“Well, yeah, but—“

 

“Jesus, Sam, what the hell is wrong with you?  What were you thinking, huh?”

 

“I wasn’t _thinking_ at all, Dean.  I was doing what teenagers do.  God, how many times did _you_ get caught in the janitor’s closet with some girl?”

 

Sam’s got a point, one that Dean might have conceded to, except that in those cases, Dean hadn’t lied to Sam about his behavior.  In fact, Dean had usually been eager to share the details while Sam kept exclaiming how he didn’t want to know.

 

“What else aren’t you telling me?”

 

And there, back in the broken part of Dean’s voice, Sam hears the heart of this problem.  Sam lied to Dean—a lot, actually—and that’s not something the Winchester brothers typically do.

 

“I—“ He starts.  Dean pins him with a look, waiting, something maybe like hope at the edges of his eyes.  He wants Sam to say something to make this okay.  To make _them_ okay.

 

But Sam can’t.  He can’t tell Dean about Munsy and his boys, about Eddy and Eli, about Steve’s little game of give and take-away.  He’s got to take responsibility some time, got to grow up and be a man.  How many times had Dad said that to Sam in the last six months alone?

 

No, Sam can’t share any of this with Dean.  And he wants to, more than anything.  Wants to erase the pain Dean’s trying to hide, wants to get in the car and out of Green Bank and put it all behind them.

 

Instead, he says, “I’m sorry,” and watches a wall go down in Dean’s gaze.

 

The walk to the car, parked around back, the drive home, dinner, all of it is spent in a tense silence, air taut with questions Dean wants to ask and Sam wants to answer, if only to reverse what’s been done.

 

He goes to bed early, seeing no reason to stay up, and wakens in the middle of the night to a warm weight at his shoulder, shaking him.

 

“Sam.”

 

He opens his eyes to find Dean’s less than a foot from his, eyes worried.

 

“You okay?” Dean asks, removing his hand but not backing away.  He’s bent over the bed, and Sam can see that he’s in boxers and tee-shirt, apparently having been to bed.

 

“What time is it?”

 

“You were having a nightmare,” Dean says, ignoring Sam’s question.

 

Sam tilts his head to see that it’s just two a.m.

 

He takes a deep breath and tries to shake away his exhaustion enough to figure out what’s happening.

 

“I don’t remember,” he says truthfully, feeling the last vestiges of an image dissipate like so much smoke.

 

“It sounded pretty bad,” Dean adds, turning to sit at the edge of Sam’s bed.

 

Which is out of the ordinary and alerts Sam that something’s not right.  This isn’t just about Sam having a bad dream, which isn’t exactly an unusual event.

 

Sam is surprised to feel the weight of Dean’s hand on his leg, warm even through the heavy bedspread and blankets.  He leans up on his elbows to get a better look at his brother’s face, which is cast into shadows by a light coming in from the hallway.

 

“Dean, what is it?” He asks, and he’s concerned now, really, because he can feel a fine tremor in Dean’s hand, can see the silhouette of Dean’s strong shoulders shuddering.

 

Dean shakes his head, and Sam wants to turn on the bedside lamp, to see his brother’s face clearly.

 

“Dean, you’re scaring me,” Sam says, reaching up to brace his hand on his brother’s shoulder.

 

Dean makes a sound, then, like he’s been wounded, and Sam almost releases his hold, except that Dean’s weight gets heavier, and Sam finds himself being pushed back into the bed as Dean collapses against him.

 

“Dean!” he cries out, really afraid now that Dean’s somehow been hurt, his mind conjuring up indistinct images built of fragments of stories he’s heard, of burning figures on the ceiling, of demons that hunt the hunters.

 

Dean is shaking against Sam, his face buried in the joining of Sam’s neck and shoulder, and it takes Sam a second to recognize the heat there and wetness, to know that his brother is crying.

 

“Dean,” he says, more softly.  “What is it, man?  Tell me.  Please.”

 

Dean pushes himself up and away from Sam, hands to either side of his head so he can feel where the pillow is pressed down by Dean’s weight.

 

Inches apart, Dean pauses, and Sam can just make out the anguish in his brother’s face.

 

“Is it Dad?  Did something happen to Dad?”  Cold dread fills his belly and sucks the breath from him as he considers how only that could make Dean look so lost.

 

But Dean shakes his head.

 

“Then what is it, Dean?  C’mon, man, you’re scaring the shit out of me here.”

 

“Do you love him?”

 

Dean’s voice is so wrecked that it takes Sam a second to put his words together and then another second to figure out that Dean’s not talking about Dad.

 

“No,” he says finally, wonderment in his voice, because this is not at all what he’d been expecting.  Is Dean freaking out because he has proof positive that Sam’s gay?  Is that it?

 

Dean’s eyes close and he releases the tiniest of breaths, and Sam understands suddenly that Dean is relieved.

 

“Dean, what’s this about?” he asks again, voice stronger.  He needs to know.

 

“I can’t—“ Dean says, and his voice sounds like he’s being strangled, like the life is being taken from him by some huge and looming thing.

 

“Tell me,” Sam says, softer, putting the love he always has for his brother into his voice.

 

“I’ve tried, Sam.  I swear I’ve tried.  You’ve got to believe me.”

 

“I do,” Sam answers immediately, though he has no idea what Dean’s tried or not.  What he does know is that he has absolute faith in Dean, and whatever is driving him now, they’ll figure it out.

 

“Okay,” Dean says, like maybe Sam has agreed to a request, or like Dean’s heard in Sam’s voice the shadow of his younger brother’s belief in him.

 

“I love you,” Dean says, and Sam feels the dread spike into terror.  Oh, god.  Is Dean leaving him?  Is he dying? 

 

“Dean—“ He starts, but his words are stopped by the gentle press of Dean’s dry, warm lips against his own.

 

Still, Sam doesn’t understand. 

 

As the kiss continues, though, it begins to dawn on Sam that this isn’t a brotherly sort of goodbye.  This isn’t Dean kissing away the pain of some greater betrayal he’s about to uncover.

 

The gentlest brush of Dean’s hand against Sam’s cheek gives him his second reckoning of the night.

 

This kiss is about love, alright.

 

It’s just not the sort Sam was expecting.

 

He has a moment of clarity, like he’s watching himself from the ceiling, looking down on the two of them there on the narrow bed.

 

He sees his brother, the man he’s known his whole life, the one who’s cared for him through every kind of hurt, the one who’s been Sam’s home no matter where they’ve been.

 

He sees himself, utterly open, vulnerable, trapped between the trust he feels and the fear that comes from outside of them both.

 

But the world as it exists for everyone else has never been the world that the Winchesters live in.

 

As soon as he thinks it, he’s back in his body, smelling his brother’s scent, feeling the stubble on Dean’s chin against the smooth skin of his own, feeling the callused fingers that have guided his hands on hilts and handles his whole life, feeling the heat of his brother and the way his lips are asking a question Dean could never, ever put into words.

 

Sam sighs his mouth open beneath his brother and answers him.

 

What happens after his surrender Sam remembers only as a series of sensations and sounds. 

 

First, Dean’s surprised noise as Sam lets his tongue explore Dean’s lower lip.

 

Then, the heat of Dean’s hands now both holding Sam’s face, cupping his jaw to control the kiss, to draw Sam up into him.

 

Dean’s weight as he presses Sam down and stretches his length along his brother’s, still kissing him, still cupping his face so that the pressure is almost but not quite too hard to breathe against.

 

Dean’s sigh as he finally, finally lets Sam’s panting mouth go to leave a line of tiny, nipping kisses along Sam’s jaw, and then his growl as he noses aside the loose neck of Sam’s shirt so that he can fasten his teeth on Sam’s collar bone and worry it with his tongue, too.

 

Sam’s own gasp as the sensation arrows to his groin.

 

The pressure of Dean’s knee between his thighs as his brother sits up to remove his own shirt and then Sam’s, to peel the covers down enough to bare him to the waist and then stretch out once more.

 

The furnace heat of Dean’s naked skin against his own.

 

The feeling of their bellies jumping in time to each other’s bolder touches.

 

He loses time somewhere between Dean working his way down his centerline, stopping to dip his tongue into the hollow of Sam’s sensitive navel, drawing a gasping laugh from him and then a begging sound as the sensation ceases, and the moment when Dean has pulled away the blankets altogether and then paused, kneeling between Sam’s spraddled legs, fingers curled beneath the waistband of his boxers, eyes on Sam, asking.

 

Sam says yes without a word, and Dean slides the boxers down, standing only long enough to pull them off altogether and step out of his own.

 

Then Dean is back, his weight making the mattress dip, the promise of it, the safe feeling of Dean pressing him down making tears start at the corner of his eyes, tears that fall freely when Dean begins to rub his hard length against Sam’s, eyes never leaving Sam’s, until Sam has to close them against the brightness he sees there, against the love in Dean’s eyes and the overwhelming sensation of their joining, the silky slide of flesh, hard and smooth and right, the breaking rhythm of his brother’s voice chanting Sam’s name, the building heat low in his belly and the way he arches into Dean and Dean says, “Yeah, Sammy, c’mon, c’mon.”

 

And then he’s bursting apart, every atom of him flying away to scatter across the darkness, sparking bright behind his eyes like his soul is a thousand thousand stars.

 

And Dean is there with him, too, of course, right with him, where he always has been and is and will be, shouting Sam’s name, echoing across the splintering sky behind Sam’s eyes, and then lapping across his belly in a warm wave.

 

It’s after that Sam knows he’ll most remember, though, the way Dean rolls off of him and by the weight of him forces Sam back towards the wall, taking always the position of protection between Sam and the door, then reaches around at the foot of the bed to find a tee shirt—whose, Sam can’t care—and wipe them both clean, and then, discarding the damp shirt, pulling the blankets up and over them and dropping a heavy arm across Sam’s still naked waist.

 

The alarm wakes him, and he has an impression from Dean’s muffled noises against the pillow they’re barely sharing, that it’s been shouting radio chatter at them for some time.

 

He struggles to rise against the pressure of Dean’s arm, still draped across him, to reach over Dean and shut off the radio.

 

Silence descends and a recognition of their mutual nudity.

 

“You gonna freak?” Dean asks, half to Sam, half to himself.

 

“No,” Sam says, meaning it.  “No,” he reiterates, looking down at Dean’s profile.

 

Dean rolls onto his back and shoves Sam toward the wall with his hip, and Sam makes a noise and moves to give him room, watching his big brother’s face carefully as he goes through the stages of worry and fear, finally settling on wonder, which sticks.

 

Sam gives him a goofy grin and drops his head for a long kiss that tastes of unbrushed teeth.

 

“Dude, gross,” Dean grouses, but not like he really means it.

 

Sam hazards a glance at the clock and then groans.  “I’m gonna be late if I don’t get up right now.”

 

Dean’s eyebrows go up.  “You’re going to school?”

 

“Have to.  Damage control.”

 

If Dean is hurt, he hides it pretty quickly, but Sam is faster and catches on.  “Hey,” he says, touching his brother’s face.  “I’d stay if I could.  You know that, right?  But I have to make sure Steve isn’t going to freak out and make things worse at school.  Besides, it’s Friday.  We’ll have the whole weekend.”

 

Sam hates that he’s leaving out a couple of important other reasons—like, _I have to lay a spirit to rest and prevent some rednecks from killing me_ —but he figures after today, he’ll be in the clear and Dean will never need to know about any of it.

 

Dean’s face brightens at the reminder that the weekend is nearly here, and he reaches over to slap Sam’s hip through the blankets.  “Get your ass in gear.  And grab a shower.  You smell like sex.”

 

Sam’s eyes darken at the reminder, and Dean’s face changes, too.  Just before they’re about to make Sam a lot later, he says, “No,” and prods Dean to get him out of bed so he can get up himself.

 

All the way to school, Dean can’t keep his eyes on the road, which Sam notices with a self-satisfied smirk.  Of course, every time he catches his brother giving him _that_ look, he feels heat in his belly, and he hopes he can get his hard-on to subside before he has to walk into school with it.

 

For a second when he comes into the school, he has the crazy thought that everyone knows what he did last night with his brother.  There are groups standing around their lockers, and they all pause as he walks past to whisper and point. 

 

He waits for the flush of shame to redden his cheeks, and when it doesn’t come, he squares his shoulders and stands up even straighter, letting the feeling of loving his brother spread out through him, projecting to everyone looking at him, whispering about him, that he’s better than whatever it is they think they know.

 

This feeling isn’t abated in the least when he arrives at his locker to find Steve Bellamy blocking it, backed up by six or seven guys that Sam vaguely recognizes as maybe being on some sports team.  Anyway, they’re wearing matching letter jackets and identical expressions of cool disdain.

 

Sam favors Steve with an inquiring but indifferent look, like he hadn’t spent time yesterday afternoon riding his hard-on on the tech room sofa.

 

In point of fact, that little indiscretion feels to Sam like it happened to someone else about a million years ago.  Between then and now Sam has become something more than the sum of his parts; he’s become finally what he’s always been:  Dean’s.

 

“You’re a pillow-biter,” Steve begins without preliminary.  “And we don’t like your kind around here.”

 

Sam looks for signs of irony in Steve’s face and, finding none, feels a sinking sensation in his stomach.  He’d thought maybe they’d gotten beyond this sort of subterfuge.

 

Sam opens his mouth to respond, and he sees it, the merest hint, there and then gone in the shifting of the other boy’s weight—Steve’s afraid of what Sam will say, afraid that Sam’s going to out him.

 

This is a pre-emptive strike.

 

Sam nods to no one in particular and gives Steve his shoulder, opening his locker and putting it between him and the phalanx of vaguely threatening boys.

 

He gathers his books, closes his locker, and says, quietly, “People are what they are.”  He’s looking directly at Steve.  “No one should have to be ashamed of that.  I’m not.  Get over it.”

 

And then he walks away, giving the gaping group a wide berth so that he can get to his homeroom in time for the bell.

 

Eddy surprises him by showing up at the lunch table.  But he doesn’t sit down, and Eli is nowhere to be found.  Sam considers asking but then thinks better of it.

 

“You aren’t going to take Eli away from me,” the other boy says, hunching over Sam a little in a way that’s a little reminiscent of Munsy’s attack of the day before.  Except that Eddy smells of tuna fish and isn’t nearly so tall.

 

Sam turns a little in his seat, using his knees to force a space between them.  He looks up at Eddy’s pained expression, takes in the way his paleness accentuates the angry red acne scarring his cheeks.  The boy is on the edge, Sam can see, and it could be Sam’s words that push him over.  Still, he has to make it clear somehow that Eli isn’t supposed to be here, that he isn’t good for Eddy.

 

“Eli doesn’t belong here,” Sam says quietly, trying to make meaningful eye contact with Eddy, whose eyes are darting around the room with paranoid distraction.  “He needs to move on to the next world.”

 

The jury’s been out for Sam for awhile now about what the “next world” might be, or even if there is one.  But he hardly thinks this is the time for theological indecision.  He has to get Eddy to see what he’s saying.

 

“Look, I know that Eli’s your friend, but—“

 

“He’s my _only_ friend,” Eddy emphasizes, taking a jittery half-step toward Sam like he might be thinking of trying to hurt him again.

 

“I know that,” Sam says, trying for sympathetic and hoping he doesn’t sound like he pities the kid.  He kind of does, but that’s not going to help anything.  “But he doesn’t belong here.”

 

“He stays as long as I want him to,” Eddy insists, which, Sam notes absently, is a strange way to put it.

 

“Then I think you need to learn to let go.”  He means well, and he says it in as unthreatening a voice as he can, but by the way Eddy’s shoulders tense and his eyes narrow, Sam realizes he’s said more than he meant to, more than he even understands.

 

“Stay away from us!” Eddy hisses, dodging back an odd step or two and then jogging away, right past the monitor on the door who yells at him about running in the cafeteria.

 

“Lover’s spat?” He hears, just before the arrival of Munsy and his bunch of thugs.

 

Sam rolls his eyes and stands up before the guy can get any closer, clears his lunch stuff with one hand and shoulders his backpack with the other.  He ignores them even as they try to maneuver him into staying, cutting quickly between them and breezing out the door without looking back, not even as Munsy shouts, “Run while you can, Winchester!”

 

“Whatever,” he mutters to himself, turning toward the stairs that lead to the second floor and the library.  Munsy’s not likely to go there, Sam’s sure, and besides, the school librarian is a harridan of wide repute.  No one messes around on her territory, not even someone as stupid and self-sabotaging as Munsy has proven to be.

 

Friday afternoon classes are usually a little squirrelly, Sam has noticed, neither the teachers nor the students having especial stamina to stick out the last few hours before the weekend, so he doesn’t learn much, except in English, where he rocks his _Huck Finn_ essay test.  He sighs a little over the last sentence, realizing that he might very well not be there to get the grade.  Dad could be home as soon as Monday.

 

He spends the rest of that period wondering how he and Dean are going to get around Dad.  No way they can tell him, obviously, but Sam’s not sure how they’ll hide it, either.  Of course, Dean’s probably chewing over that problem right now, too, Sam reflects, and he feels warm at the idea of Dean thinking of Sam the way Sam is thinking of him.

 

Too warm, actually.  He shifts a notebook onto his lap and starts reading the grammar posters taped over the blackboard until he can remove it without embarrassing himself.

 

Detention is sort of anticlimactic, insofar as Steve doesn’t show, and Sam wonders if he’s going to have a greeting party when he goes to his locker on the way out of school.

 

But he has the hallway to himself as he wends his way there, and he’s starting to think he might be free and clear for the weekend—a thought that makes him smile in a way that he’s glad no one’s around to see—when a piece of paper flutters out of his locker from where it had been shoved into the vent at the top.

 

In cramped, stilted print on paper torn unevenly from a wirebound notebook, as if in some haste, he reads, “Meet me at the graveyard.  I’ve changed my mind.  Eddy.”

 

Sam glances at his watch and considers that Dean’s going to be there in twenty minutes.  The graveyard’s only a few blocks east, though, and Sam knows he can make it if he hurries.  He can at least meet Eddy and figure out what they’re going to do.  The salt and lighter fluid he always carries might not be enough in this case, and anyway, he still isn’t sure which part of Eli’s corporeal self has been left behind.

 

Putting both arms through his backpack, Sam sprints down the hall, out the doors, and takes the front steps three at a time, hitting the pavement in a comfortable, long-legged pace that he can and has kept up for miles.

 

The cemetery is less than five minutes at Sam’s speed, and he makes it there before he’s really sweating at all.

 

Fifteen minutes ‘til he has to meet Dean.

 

He searches Green Bank Cemetery for signs of life, the late afternoon sun behind him making long shadows of monuments and stones.  It’s hard to see, but he thinks he catches movement in the western corner, and he heads that way at a brisk jog, backpack banging against his lower back with every stride.

 

He sees Eddy near a mausoleum that reads “Benedict” in stark letters and raises a hand.

 

“Hey,” he calls out, announcing his presence.

 

Eddy spins and then stands there until Sam’s three feet away and closing.

 

“You can’t have Eli,” he says, and Sam stops, confused.

 

“But your note said—“

 

“I’m—I’m sorry.  But you can’t have Eli.  He’s my _friend_.”

 

He feels the blow seconds after he senses movement, so his arm is up to take the brunt of it and the branch misses his head, though a sharp, broken bit catches his cheek near his eye and he hisses and blinks away the pain-tears that come unbidden.

 

Matching scars, he has time to think, even as he’s dropping into a crouch and putting a tree at his back so no one can sneak up on him.

 

Unfortunately, his position has him staring directly into the sun where it’s perched on the horizon, and all he can see are black blobs of movement between tears and squinting.  It’s enough to keep him ahead of the attack—barely—but not for long.  He slides around the tree until the sun’s to his left.

 

That’s when Munsy comes into focus, him and Fatneck and the rest, all armed with various implements apparently scavenged for the occasion—two tree branches, a chunk of concrete that looks strangely similar to the top of a Celtic cross, what might be the brass urn from a gravestone, and a broken clay pot.

 

Eddy is nowhere in sight.

 

“Gee, and I didn’t get you anything,” Sam quips, trying to buy himself time to clear the black sun-spots from his compromised vision.

 

No such luck.

 

Munsy moves in while another boy ducks out of sight behind Sam, and he knows he’s about to be flanked.  He dodges across a narrow space, leaping a low stone cross, and slams his back against a mausoleum, sliding along it until he’s got the middle of the long wall at his back.  They can’t come at him from behind this way, and he’ll at least have them all more or less in view.

 

The sun is to his right now, sinking fast, and he has a moment to wonder if twilight will be better or worse for him.  Since everyone already has his position, he guesses it really doesn’t matter.

 

He can’t fight all five of them, but luckily, they’ve seen one too many martial arts films, because they first try to rush him one at a time.

 

Fatneck goes first, raising the hunk of concrete over his head like he’s going to bash Sam’s brains in, which might work if he wasn’t telegraphing his intentions and leaving his gut open for attack.

 

Sam plants a solid kick in the kid’s big belly, feels the air rush out of him, dodges the concrete as it’s flung involuntarily from the kid’s outstretched arms.

 

The kid can’t catch himself in that position, and he goes down hard, chin catching on the edge of grave marker set almost—but not quite—flush with the grass.

 

Out for the count.

 

Munsy seems content to let the others wear Sam down.  He stands to the right egging them on, calling Sam every kind of name and urging them not to be pussies.

 

His second attacker has a branch, and he swings it hard from the shoulders like a ball-player.  Sam can’t catch it, so he dodges aside, letting the brunt of the blow strike the concrete, which wrings a cry from the guy holding it.

 

Sam grabs it before the guy can pull it back, arms probably stinging from the hard surface blow, and yanks his attacker toward him, off-balance.  When the guy’s momentum has him staggering forward, Sam slams the branch back at him, catching him just below the ribs and bringing him to his knees.

 

He’s able to wrench the branch away from him then, and he flips it neatly, catching the fat end and turning in mid-snatch to strike the kid a ringing blow to his shoulder.

 

The guy wheezes out a sound that might’ve been a scream, except he still can’t take in any air, and clutches his injured arm, falling over on his side, obviously out of the fight.

 

The third one throws the brass urn and catches Sam in the collar bone.

 

It’s a good throw, and the object is heavy.  Though the kid was probably aiming for his head, the blow does damage, causing Sam to grunt and drop the stick.  His right arm is numb, a tingling wash running from his collarbone to his fingertips signaling some kind of nerve damage.  He can’t quite make a fist, and he sure as hell can’t raise the arm.

 

The only good thing about it is the urn, which has fallen with a solid sound between his staggered feet.

 

He picks it up in his left hand, with which he’s had plenty of practice throwing things like knives, and eyes the pitcher carefully.

 

The guy gets the idea and starts to back away. 

 

It’s a stand off of a sort, so long as they keep thinking individually.  Unfortunately, Munsy figures out the weak point in his own plan and says, “Get him!” at the same time he starts his rush, stick raised.

 

Sam grabs the narrow end of the urn, feeling the thin brass pedestal digging into his palm as he brings it up to wield it like a clumsy shield.

  
He catches the stick as it comes down, feels the blow through his arm, hears the ringing sound as the urn wings out of his hand and strikes a nearby headstone.

 

Munsy is bringing the stick around for a second strike when the kid with the pot comes in from the other side, raising it overhand to shatter it over Sam’s head.

 

Catching the motion out of the corner of his eye, he deflects a portion of it with his shoulder, but a piece of it catches him solidly on the ear, which hurts like a son of a bitch and brings a dullness to his vision that he tries to breathe through as he staggers away three, four, five steps and ducks around the far end of the mausoleum.

 

His shoulder is sending out a steady, penetrating throb, his ear likewise stinging in counterpoint, and that whole side of him, ear, neck, and shoulder, aches.  He shakes his head, regrets it when the world swims dizzingly, and strains to hear the sounds of ambush over the blood roaring in his injured ear.

 

It’s darker back here, no sunlight to pierce the canopy of evergreens, and he narrows his eyes, searching the ground for a branch or stone or any kind of weapon.  Three against one might not be a problem if he could use both hands, but right now, he’s in trouble and he knows it.

 

Sam hears the scuff of a boot against gravel and looks to his left in time to see Munsy rounding the corner.  He scans to his right and finds the boy who’d carried the pot now brandishing the brass urn.

 

He takes three steps away from the mausoleum, trees to either side of him maybe four feet each way, hoping the third kid can’t get behind him without him seeing but not wanting to be up against a wall, limiting his movement.

 

Given that he can only fight with his left hand, he’s going to need to use his legs, and when Munsy gets close enough, overconfident because of the branch’s length, Sam feints a duck and then comes out of it with a kick that out-reaches the stick and sends Munsy stumbling back. He caroms off a tree, staggers into a half-turn, and then trips over a stone and goes down on his hands and knees.

 

The second kid has apparently been slowed up by watching his leader get felled because Sam has time to watch the kid wind up with the urn, and he sidesteps the throw easily.

 

Unfortunately for Sam, that puts him into the bear hug of the third boy, who had come in through the trees.

 

“Got him,” the kid says just as Sam tosses his head back hard into his chin, and the kid yelps and loosens his grip.

  
Sam’s got to give him credit, though, he doesn’t let go, so Sam tries for the instep with his booted heel.

 

The kid is wearing boots, too, though, so this move is less effective, and Sam’s left thrashing and throwing his weight around, trying to put the kid off balance so he can get free, when Munsy makes a clumsy swing that nevertheless clips Sam in the jaw.

 

His teeth slam together hard, and he bites his tongue.  Tears come up in his eyes immediately and he breathes hard through his nose, trying to martial the pain before it gets on top of him.  A second blow strikes him in the cheek where it’s already been opened up by the branch, and he feels the skin split further and hisses out the pain.

 

The kid holding him tightens his grip, taking advantage of the way Sam has lost air, and Sam finds it hard to take in more than wheezing sips of breath.

 

A third punch lands low on his jaw near his ear and he feels the sliding pop as his jaw dislocates.

 

The pain, thankfully, is dulled by the creeping darkness narrowing his field of vision like a round lens blinking shut.

 

He has time to think, _Dean’s going to kill me_ , before the shutter’s final blink blanks the world out altogether.

 

“Sam.”

 

He thinks he hears a familiar voice, thinks he might slur the word, “Dean?”

 

And then he’s awake, and he wishes he weren’t because everything hurts—face, shoulder, neck.  Breathing.

 

It’s dark, and he wonders if he’s been beaten blind, until he hears Dean say, “Open your eyes, Sam.  C’mon, Sam, please.  Open your eyes.  Look at me.”

 

Sam manages to slit one open—the one that’s not swollen shut over his ravaged cheek—and a vaguely Dean-shaped figure swims into hazy focus.

 

“Can you hear me?  Sam?  Talk to me, man.”

 

But Sam can’t talk.  When he tries to speak, his jaw joint grinds glass into his skull, and he moans—or thinks he moans, he loses time again.

 

When he comes to a second time, Dean’s cradling him against his knees, one strong hand on his chin.

 

“This is going to hurt,” is the only warning Sam has, and then shrieking agony streaks across his face with the sickening clicking sound of his jaw being realigned.

 

Mercifully, darkness takes him a third time.

 

“You hurt anywhere I can’t see?” Dean’s saying when Sam recognizes his surroundings again.

  
He’s cold, starting to shiver with it, and Dean gathers him close, dropping his cheek against the top of Sam’s head for just a second, breathing something into Sam’s hair that might be endearments or could be curses for all that Sam can tell.

 

“Can you stand if you lean on me?”

 

Sam mumbles around his thick, throbbing tongue and swollen jaw, and Dean takes it for an assent, lifts him as gently as he can by the armpits, slings an arm around his strong shoulders.

 

“Car’s that way,” Dean says, moving carefully, step by agonizing step, out of the dark shadow of the mausoleum and into an early evening lit by an almost full moon hanging low and swollen in the grey sky.

 

Sam can just make out the Impala, which crouches like a mythical monster on the narrow cemetery road, and he feels exposed on the long walk to it, even with Dean at his side.

  
He tries to ask about Munsy and his crew, and Dean says, “Don’t worry.  I took care of ‘em,” so Sam guesses he was making himself understood.

 

The hearing on the sore side of his face is muffled, as through cotton batting, and he worries that he might have real damage, but he doesn’t want the questions a trip to the hospital would bring, doesn’t want Dad to know what’s been going on if there’s any way to avoid it.  Maxing out their only credit card on an emergency room visit would definitely do it.

 

“No hospital,” he manages, and Dean says, “I know,” but there’s a tight pain in his voice that makes Sam feel guilty as hell for worrying his brother.

 

“’m alright,” Sam says, and Dean says, “Shut up, bitch,” with affection and sorrow and love.

 

Once home and inside, Dean lowers Sam carefully to the couch and makes several quick, efficient trips to load the end table with first aid kit, warm water, old towels, a better light, and several promising bottles of medicine.

 

“No meds until I’m sure you don’t have a concussion,” Dean says, shining a penlight in Sam’s eyes, which makes him hiss and jerk away.  The motion brings a wave of dizziness and after it a roiling mess of nausea that has him blanching and reaching for Dean.

 

Dean’s seen enough of this to know what Sam needs and gets the wastebasket under his chin just before he brings up what feels like an aquarium’s-worth of bitter brown bile.

 

Blood mingles with the sick, and the stench of it washes over Sam in a stinking cloud that has him heaving out another mouthful of thick, stringy puke.

 

He groans, feeling needles piercing his skull and trying to poke their way out through his eyes.

 

Dean helps him sit back against the couch arm, props a pillow under him, and runs a hand carefully, gently over Sam’s forehead.

 

“You’re going to be okay, Sam.”

 

It sounds like he’s talking to himself.

 

Dean works over Sam steadily for a solid hour, cleaning every cut and abrasion, searching with prodding fingers and apologies for broken bones or any other more serious damage.  He worries for a long minute over the cheekbone, making Sam cry embarrassed tears at the pain of it, and finally places a butterfly kiss on Sam’s eyebrow above his swollen eye before turning to the business of closing the wound.

 

When Dean is satisfied that Sam will live, though Sam himself is uncertain of the outcome and thinks maybe he’d rather not, all things considered, he cleans up the mess with mechanical, jerky motions that tell Sam how upset his brother really is.

 

“I’m okay, Dean,” he says, though it’s less convincing since he’s still slurring badly.

 

“Bullshit.  They would’ve beaten you to death if I hadn’t stopped them.”

 

Dean’s standing half-turned away, hands full of bloody towels.

 

Sam can see the way his shoulders heave up and down with every breath, knows his brother is close to losing it.

 

“But you did.  Stop them.”  It hurts, every word hurts, but Sam needs Dean to know that he’s fine.

 

Dean nods, jaw tensing, and heads to the kitchen to discard the garbage.

 

When he comes back, Sam says, “How did you know to come to the cemetery?”

 

At least, he sort of says it.  Dean seems to understand.

 

“I was waiting at the school when this weird, skinny kid ran up to the car and told me you needed help and were at the cemetery.  I got there as fast as I could.”

 

Sam closes his good eye and considers.  Eddy must have had second thoughts after he saw Munsy and his guys show up, must’ve known Dean would be at the school.

 

“I’m sorry I wasn’t faster.”

 

Sam opens his eye and tries to communicate whatever part of “don’t be an idiot” his beat-up face can say.  “Don’t be an idiot,” he says, just to be clear.

 

“What happened to Munsy and his guys?”  His words sound more and more like they’re being filtered through wet sand, and he can feel the pull of his one good eye to close.

 

“I’ll tell you tomorrow.  You need sleep.  You want to try the bedroom, or do you want to stay here?”

 

Sam considers his options for a second and wakes up to bright sunlight filtering through the living room curtains.

 

“Hey,” Dean says softly, like Sam might have a hangover.

  
Or the worst headache ever, which is true.

 

Sam groans and Dean hands him two fat white pills and a half glass of water.

 

“Can you swallow those?”

 

Sam doesn’t nod—that would hurt too fucking much—just takes the pills on his tongue and drinks enough water to wash them down.

 

It hurts to swallow.  It hurts to exhale.  It hurts to blink.

 

Sighing, he puts his head back on the pillow.

  
“Sleep some more, Sammy, it’s early yet.”

 

Sam does as he’s told.

 

When he wakes up again, the quality of light in the room suggests that it’s afternoon.  Dean’s sitting in the armchair watching an old movie on mute, and Sam watches his brother for a long while.  The sun is catching Dean on his right cheek, highlighting the down of his face and gilding his eyebrows and eyelashes.  Every freckle stands out in golden relief against his pale skin, and Sam sighs to see how beautiful his brother is.

 

Dean turns at the sound and smiles, and Sam has trouble breathing, not because he’s hurt but because it hurts to have all that love fall on him at one time.

 

“Hey,” Dean murmurs, dropping the remote and coming over to kneel beside the couch.

 

He runs the back of his hand gently down Sam’s uninjured cheek.

 

“How’re you feeling?”

 

It’s a dumb but required question, and Sam merely rolls his one good eye in response.

 

“Want to try to eat some soup?”

 

He doesn’t.  He doesn’t want to put anything on his painful tongue or try to swallow past his swollen jaw, but he knows he has to eat something.

 

“I can’t give you any more meds on an empty stomach.”

 

Sam nods a fraction of an inch, and Dean rises gracefully and goes to get the soup.

 

He’s feeding Sam one lukewarm teaspoon at a time when there’s a knock at the door that startles Dean into spilling soup on Sam’s chin.  He wipes it off with a napkin and then gives Sam a look of concern before getting up, setting the soup down on the end table, and pulling his gun from the small of his back.

 

There’s no peephole in the door, no fanlights, either, so Dean has to crack it an inch to see who’s there.

 

“Who’re you?” he asks, none too friendly, and Sam hears a barely audible response.

 

“He’s sick,” Dean says to the obvious inquiry after Sam.

 

More muttering.

 

Then Dean’s opening the door enough to let Eddy in, and Sam widens his one good eye to see the boy.

 

He should be pissed— _is_ pissed—for the way the kid betrayed him.  But Eddy did, after all, have a change of heart, and he guesses he wouldn’t be alive at all if it weren’t for him going to get Dean the way he did.

 

And, too, it’s pretty ballsy coming to Sam’s house like this.

 

Eddy shuffles into the room, practically scuffing his shoes on the carpet.  He gives Sam a quick look, pales even more at the sight of Sam’s battered face, and then drops his eyes to take in the tops of his sneakers.

 

“Well?” Dean barks, his tone suggesting that it’d better be good.

  
“I came to say I’m so-sorry,” Eddy stammers.  “I didn’t mean for you to-to-to get hu-hurt.”

 

The kid sounds like he’s on the edge of tears, but that doesn’t do much to mitigate Sam’s anger.

 

“What did you think Munsy was going to do?  You knew he was out to get me.  You set me up.”  It takes him a long time to get these sentences out clearly past his tongue and jaw, and Eddy’s eyes widen incrementally with every challenging word.

 

Dean moves in behind Eddy, blocking his path to the door, and says from over his shoulder.  “This the kid that sicced those guys on you?”

 

Sam nods.

 

Dean brings one hand down hard on Eddy’s shoulder like a vise grip.

 

“No!” Eddy cries.  “I didn’t—didn’t mean…!  I just didn’t want you to take Eli away.  That’s all.  But you did anyway, didn’t you?”

 

And even in the midst of his obvious danger, Eddy is defiant, shooting a glare at Sam and twisting out from under Dean’s grip.  He doesn’t try to get away, just stands there breathing hard, eyes level on Sam, face flushed now with anger.

 

“Who the hell is Eli?  What’s he talking about, Sam?”

 

Sam gives Dean an imploring look, though he’s not sure one eye can really convey that expression, and says, “I didn’t take Eli, Eddy.”

 

Eddy snorts.  “I don’t believe you.”  And he sounds like a little kid whose parents have just told him that the dog ran away, when in fact it died under the wheels of a passing truck.

 

“It’s true.  If Eli’s gone, I didn’t do it.”

 

“Is Eli the kid who came to tell me about the cemetery?”  Dean asks, looking from Eddy to Sam and back to Eddy, clearly confused.

 

Sam shakes his head and says, “No,” even as Eddy says, “Yeah, I guess,” sullenly.

 

Then it all makes sense, breaking over Sam with a painful clarity that makes him have to close his eyes for a second to get his head together.

 

“Eli saved me,” he says.

 

Eddy nods, face mulish with anger.  “He was my friend first.  You took him, and I want him back.”

 

Sam says, almost sadly, “I don’t have Eli, Eddy.  Eli must have left on his own.”

 

“Who the fuck is Eli?” Dean barks, losing patience with them both.

 

“Eli was my friend,” Eddy says, which doesn’t help at all.

 

“Eli was a spirit,” Sam adds immediately.

 

“You had an imaginary friend?”  Dean’s amusement is evident, as is his anger, at least to Sam, who’s used to seeing it. 

 

Eddy shrugs.  “He was real to me.”

 

“And you saw him, too?” Dean asks, giving Sam a look.

 

Sam simply nods.

 

“You were gonna lay him?” 

 

Eddy looks startled and then vaguely disgusted, but before he can say anything, Sam explains, “Yes, I was going to lay him _to rest_ ,” emphasizing the last two words.

 

“He stayed for me,” Eddy insists, and Sam remembers the boy saying something similar the day before.

 

“You mean—“

 

“The spirit was stuck here because of you,” Dean finishes, nodding.  “Makes sense.  I’ve heard of something like that, once, in Aspen, I think.  Dad worked the case in ’92 or ’93.”

 

Sam doesn’t remember, but then, he’d only had a year or two then to get used to the idea that his father was a monster hunter, so he’s to be forgiven for selective memory loss.

 

“But Eli died five years before he showed up at the playground.”

 

Eddy shrugs and Dean looks thoughtful.

 

“Huh,” he says, finally.  “Well, whatever.  Seems like Eli didn’t want to be your friend anymore, Eddy.  Guess when you throw in with the bullies that’s what you get.”

 

It’s true and it’s cruel, the way truth often is, and Eddy shrinks a little and drops his head, shoulders starting to shake.  Sam can see that the kid’s an inch away from losing it.

 

“Time to go,” Dean says, and it’s not a suggestion.  Eddy makes his way to the door without looking at Sam or saying anything else, and when he leaves, Sam sighs out a long breath, feeling suddenly very, very tired.

 

Dean lingers by the door, back to Sam, for a minute or two, and Sam knows by the delay that his brother is trying to tamp down his anger so he doesn’t unleash it on Sam in his current condition.

 

Sam says, “Dean, I’m sorry.  I wanted to tell you, but—“

 

“But what, you couldn’t trust me?  Afraid I’d break up your little buddies?”

 

Dean’s right, which makes his words that much more pointed.  Sam closes his eye for a second and then opens it again, letting Dean see all of his regret on his face.

 

Of course, his face is painted with a palette of regret, so it’s not hard.

 

“I just—.  I wanted to do it on my own, Dean.  At first, I didn’t think Eli was even any danger.”  Dean snorts his disbelief at this naïve notion, but he doesn’t interrupt.

 

“And then, once I’d figured it out, I thought I’d made a mess and it was my job to clean it up.  I didn’t think it was anything I couldn’t handle.  I fucked up.”

 

And he had.  From the beginning, Sam had failed to see the real threat in Eddy, took the kid for granted because he was a geek, didn’t recognize the danger until it was far too late for any of them.

 

“Yeah, well, everybody does that, Sam.  But I thought Winchesters fucked up together, you know?”

 

Sam looks up quickly at Dean, wondering if there’s more to that statement than just the current circumstances, wondering if that’s regret he hears in Dean’s voice, regret for what they’d done the other night, what they’d become together.

 

“Are you saying—?” He begins, unsure of how to finish the sentence.

 

He doesn’t have to, though, since there’s obviously something on what’s left of his face to tell Dean what Sam’s thinking.

 

“No, Sam.  Not that.  In a world of fucked up things, that’s one thing that’s gotta be right.  Right?”

 

He asks the question like he already knows the answer, but Sam hears the doubt like low-lying fog that covers his brother’s fear.

 

“It’s right,” Sam says softly, smiling. 

 

Dean winces.  “Stop that,” he says.  “You’re making _my_ face hurt.”  But as if to soften his words, he kneels again by the couch and brushes his lips across Sam’s forehead, across the lid of his one good eye, and then down to the un-bruised corner of his lip.

 

“I love you,” Dean breathes against a patch of unblemished skin on Sam’s neck.

 

“I love you, too,” he murmurs into Dean’s ear.

 

He falls asleep with his brother’s lips against his throat and the late afternoon sun painting them both in gold.

 

 

*****

 

The bad thing about werewolves is that they’re only that way for three nights, and if you miss ‘em, you’ve got two choices:  kill ‘em while they’re still human or wait another month.

 

The good thing about John Winchester is that he rarely misses once he’s on the trail of a pack.

 

What’s bad for the werewolves, however, is also bad for Sam.

 

Sunday morning, he’s too sore to move off the couch, despite Dean’s constant, patient care of his younger brother.

 

Sam had had the idea that he’d walk into school looking like road-kill tomorrow morning and take care of the rumors of his death, which have been so greatly exaggerated, in fact, that Dean opens the door a few minutes past eleven to find a primly dressed Mrs. McCloskey holding a tuna casserole and a condolence card.

  
“I didn’t know where to send flowers, dear.  Are you having it at Eckert and Banks or somewhere out of town?”

 

Before Dean can formulate a reasonable response that doesn’t include the words, “What the fuck are you talking about?” the old woman’s eyes stray past him toward the living room, where she spies Sam propped against the sofa arm working his ginger way through a bowl of really runny oatmeal.

 

She takes in a breath, but Sam has to hand it to her, she doesn’t make any other indication of surprise.

 

Instead, she pats Dean’s near hand—occupied with holding the casserole, still warm from the oven—and says, “You boys can use it, I’m sure.  I’ll take care of the rumor mill,” and then makes her way back to her car at the brisk pace of a much younger woman.

 

Dean closes the door, puts the dish in the fridge, and flips the card onto Sam’s lap.

 

He reads aloud the woman’s tiny, bird-like script with amusement.

 

“I’m sorry for the loss of your brother, who was a good boy and a better library patron.  I’m sorry, too, that I didn’t get to know you two better.”

 

Dean smiles, genuine and wide.  “Well, I’ll be damned.”

 

Sam answers with their usual, “Probably.”

 

“So, you ready to tell me what happened after I was knocked out?”

 

Dean’s shoulders tense, but he gives no other indication of what the memory of finding Sam slumped bloody in the hands of three attackers does to him.  Then he launches into a terse tale of what happened next.

 

Of the five boys, only three were still standing.  The one who’d fallen and struck his chin was still out of it and the other, the one Sam hand nailed with the branch, had a fractured radius and was sitting up against a footstone, moaning and clutching his arm to his chest.

 

When Dean approached, Munsy had stopped pummeling Sam’s face to say, “What the fuck—“  which is as far as he’d gotten before Dean opened up with the sawed-off.

  
“Salt rounds,” Dean explains with a grave degree of regret in his voice.  “Both barrels.  Right in the chest.”

 

Sam doesn’t wince, first because it would hurt too much and second because he has no sympathy at all for the bully.

 

“The other two?”

 

Dean laughs.  “Ran into each other, fell down, hit their heads.  Man, you should’ve seen it!  It was like something out of the Stooges!  Didn’t knock ‘em out, but it put ‘em down, anyway.”

 

Sam tries to stifle a laugh that isn’t worth the pain, but he manages to convey that he shares Dean’s glee.

 

“What do you think they told people had happened?”

 

Dean shrugs.  “Besides that you’re dead?  Pussies probably claimed it was a serial killer on a rampage or something.”

 

Sam nods carefully.

 

For a lot of that afternoon and into the early evening, Sam lies with his back to Dean’s chest, one of Dean’s legs hanging off the couch, foot on the floor, and the other leg tucked tight in against the couch back, parallel to Sam’s two.  It should be uncomfortable, but the heat of his brother against his back and the reassuring rumble of Dean’s voice in his chest when he talks sends Sam into a half-awake state that softens the sharpest angles of his pain.

 

Dean rouses him as twilight is descending to have some more soup and take two more big white pills.

 

He’s always been a pretty fast healer, and he’s pleased to see light coming in through the swollen eye.  Dean assures him he looks like the shambling undead when he makes his very careful, excruciatingly slow way to the bathroom.

 

“Dude, there’s no way you’re going to school tomorrow,” Dean says at about seven, waking Sam from a drooling sleep against Dean’s chest.

 

Sam mutters an indistinct curse and slips back to sleep even as Dean slides out from under him and settles him more fully into place on the couch.

 

Sam awakens once in the darkest part of the night to see Dean sitting on the floor, back to the couch, head on his chest, obviously out like a light.  After that, he doesn’t waken again until he hears, “What the hell happened here?”

 

Dean’s already scrambling to his feet by the time their father gets the front door closed.

 

Sam’s got his one good eye wide open, the other at half-mast, and he’s trying to smile in the least ghastly way he can manage.

 

From the look on Dad’s face, he’s not buying it.

 

“What happened?” He repeats, and there’s a hardness there that brooks no lying.

 

Sam knows part of it is his Dad’s worry coming through, but it still makes his stomach clench with mingled shame and anger.  He suddenly wants Dean to tell their father anything but the truth.

 

“It’s under control, Dad,” Dean starts.

 

“I want to hear it from Sam, Dean,” Dad interrupts, holding up a hand and dropping his duffle onto the arm chair.

 

He crouches by the couch and starts a damage assessment even as he says, “Well?”

 

Sam looks up, past their dad, whose eyes are probing Sam’s bruised collarbone, visible at the loose neck of his tee-shirt, to see Dean give him a smile entirely inappropriate to the situation.

 

It’s a smile that says Sam should remember who he belongs to, that he’s Dean’s, and Dean is his, and together they can get through anything.

 

He returns the smile as best he can and then lets his eyes fix on his father’s face.

 

Then he begins to tell the whole story from the beginning.

 

Dad’s already gearing up to go take care of Eli when Sam gets to the part about the spirit being gone of his own accord.

 

“Well, maybe that’s true, but this Eddy kid must have some kind of power.  He’s got to be put in check,” John is saying, already going through his duffle, sorting the werewolf kit from the rest of it, planning his next step even as his fingers winnow out the silver chaff and number the bottles of holy water he always keeps on hand.

 

“Dad, I think that’s something Sam should do,” Dean says.

 

Sam’s grateful eyes fall on his brother, who has been silent through most of this, adding only his part in Sam’s rescue near the end.

 

“Oh you do, huh?”  Dad’s voice is challenging, but not particularly loud.

 

“It’s his case,” Dean notes, holding his father’s look.

 

After a long minute, John nods, mostly to himself, and gathers up the duffle.  “I’ve gotta get this stuff stowed and clean my guns.  You need anything?”

 

He says this to Sam almost as an afterthought, already halfway down the hallway to the bedroom.

 

“I’m good,” Sam says.

 

And he is.

 

Dean brushes a hand across the top of Sam’s head as he follows their dad to offer his help.

 

*****

 

It’s Thursday when Sam is strong enough to walk from the Impala to the front doors of Green Bank Regional High School.  The morning bell is fifteen minutes off, and the hallways are teeming with teenagers.

 

Sam sees the skinny, dark-haired kid with bad acne backed in under the stairs and surrounded by a group of students as he’s making his slow but determined way to his locker to clean it out.  They’re leaving tomorrow, assuming there isn’t a job to take care of right there in town.

 

Sam pauses by the gathered group and realizes that Eddy is speaking to a petite blonde girl in a varsity letter jacket who’s flanked by two guys also wearing them.

 

Other kids, ranged behind them in rough half-circles, are asking questions about what happened at the cemetery, and Eddy is answering, his eyes alight with an eagerness to share the tale.

 

Just as he’s coming to the climactic part where the “killer” leaped from behind a “tomb” brandishing an “axe,” Eddy sees that he has a new audience member, and his eyes go comically wide.

 

His stuttered stop has all heads turning toward Sam.

 

There’s a collective gasp and then a whisper runs among them like wind in the tall grass.

 

Sam knows what he looks like, knows the way his left eye is still a little lazy, the way his cheek is red and raised from the stitches, the way his jaw sports bruises that rainbow out in ripples along his neck.

 

The kids clear an aisle from Sam to Eddy like they’re expecting some kind of Old West showdown.

 

Sam says, “Hey, Eddy, can I talk to you a minute?”

 

And Eddy, darting a nervous glance at their many witnesses, nods, swallows, and walks toward him.

 

The fickle crowd, obviously most interested in the next big thing, follows them with greedy glances, expecting some kind of serious violence.

 

But Sam doesn’t hit Eddy.  Instead, he says, “I’ve gotta get my stuff from my locker.”

 

“You’re leaving?”

 

“Yeah.  My dad’s got a job in another state.”

 

“Oh.”

 

Sam would swear he hears regret in Eddy’s voice.

 

“Hey, Eddy,” Sam says as he’s working the combination on his lock.  “You have any more visits from Eli?”

 

“N-no.”  Sam sees nothing on the other boy’s face but bitterness.

 

“And you haven’t met anymore friends like Eli, have you?”

 

John’s working theory is that Eddy can call and trap spirits in this plane.

 

“No.”  Now, the boy’s voice is more sullen than bitter.

 

“So are these your new friends?” Sam asks, though he knows better.

 

Apparently, Eddy does, too.  “They’ll get bored of me once they’re sick of hearing the same story again and again.”

 

“What about Munsy and his crew?”

 

Eddy shrugs one shoulder and tries to hide a smirk.  “Someone said Munsy is afraid to come to school.  Something about a serial killer.”  Eddy makes a noise to indicate his derision.

 

“You going to be okay?”

 

Eddy gives him his eyes then, and for the first time, Sam sees in them the man Eddy might some day become.  He holds back a shiver.

 

“Don’t pretend you care, Winchester.  Just get out of Green Bank.”

 

Sam draws himself up to his full height, despite the pang it causes in his still sore collar bone, and says, “If we have to come back here for you, Eddy, you won’t get off so easily.  Remember that.”

 

Eddy shrinks at Sam’s words and darts his eyes away, like he’s already considering escape routes.

 

“Don’t make me come back here, Eddy.”  Sam figures it bears reiteration.

 

Eddy nods but says nothing else.

 

Sam is silent, too, as he closes his locker, spins the lock, and walks away.  He has one last stop at the main office to drop off his textbooks and he’s almost home free when he hears, “Hey, Winchester.”

 

He stops, three steps to the glass doors, another six to freedom.  He can see Dean leaning against the Impala, which he’s got idling at the curb, can see Dad behind him in the truck, just in case there’s trouble.

 

He could just keep going, get free of this place, climb inside his brother’s car, back into their real life, and just go.

 

Sam turns around.

 

Steve Bellamy is alone this time, the homeroom bell having cleared the halls while Sam was in the main office asking to have his transcripts forwarded to Bellington, Wisconsin.

 

“Steve,” Sam says.

 

The boy closes the space between them, stops less than an arm’s length away, well within Sam’s personal space.

 

He doesn’t reach out to touch Sam, though, and with his glasses on, Sam can’t tell what Steve really wants.

 

_Maybe that’s always the problem._

 

Steve brings his right hand up away from his side, like he wants to reach for Sam, but it stops there suddenly as Steve’s gaze catches on something over Sam’s shoulder.

 

In the twin mirrors of Steve’s shades, Sam sees Dean straighten away from the Impala and start walking toward them.

 

Sam smiles, love full on his face, he’s sure, to see Dean coming toward him to take him away, and he doesn’t care that Steve sees the love there and thinks it's for him, for Steve, not for Dean, Sam’s brother, who Sam loves with everything he has.

 

“Goodbye, Steve,” he says, giving the boy his back and walking out the doors, leaving Steve and Green Bank behind him as he meets his brother.

 

“Everything okay?” Dean asks as Sam closes the distance between them.

 

Sam gives him a wide smile, wishing he could kiss Dean and show him just how good he feels.

 

“It will be,” he promises, and Dean’s smile softens like he knows what Sam means.

 

“It will be,” he says again, brushing Dean’s shoulder as they fall in side by side.

 

*****FIN*****

 


End file.
